Memory in the Literary Memoir
Memory in the Literary Memoir
This chapter considers a range of specimen passages, written in the early and mid-twentieth century, from memoirs by poet and playwright William Butler Yeats and by novelists Vladimir Nabokov and Mary McCarthy. All three were gifted writers who became fascinated with memoir writing, not only to record a variety of vivid and important memories, but also to revisit and refine them later on. The literary memoir focuses with intensity on its author's capacity to remember, making it fertile ground for evaluating the nature and accuracy of long-term personal memory over periods of time that far exceed those of typical psychology experiments. The passages presented in this chapter raise questions about the outer limits of human memory and about its interaction, fusion, or confusion with creativity and imagination.
Keywords: literary memoir, William Butler Yeats, Vladimir Nabokov, Mary McCarthy, capacity to remember, long-term personal memory, human memory, creativity, imagination
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