Why is Memory Important in Medieval Romances?

Why, indeed, is memory important in medieval romances? This question needs clarification given the many associations and definitions of such a complex cognitive faculty as memory, and the equally wide-ranging scope of this particular literary genre. We should begin by considering what exactly we mean by “memory,” which can be both individual, relating to the thought processes of a single remembering subject, and also collective. To take examples from the romance genre itself, a single knight might be trying desperately to maintain the memory of his love whilst away from home for many years. This is his individual memorial challenge. However, at the same time, that very knight's story has been designed to look back and remember a golden age, the perfection of a chivalric world, in a way that an audience can readily appreciate and understand at the present time. We might see this latter remembrance as a collective memorial endeavour. However, matters, predictably, are not quite that simple in romances and their memorial work cannot be divided so definitively into categories of individual, character memory and collective, audience memory. The memorial work in a romance is more fluid and is shared between characters and audience. Memory compares the past with the present in romances but to comprehend just how this is achieved requires an understanding of the mechanisms of memory alongside the essentials of a medieval romance. Whilst continually relying upon remembered details for moral and aesthetic unity, these tales simultaneously reveal the complex craft of memory which has made such recollections possible.

Romances are enjoyable because they reward the human aptitude for remembering past experiences and interpreting the present with reference to that past. In romances, as in life, we remember what we have already seen and the tales give the process of recollection meaning, purpose and, crucially, expression. Boncompagno da Signa, writing at the University of Bologna during the first half of the thirteenth century, declared that “[m]emory is a glorious and wonderful gift of nature, by which we recall the past, comprehend the present, and contemplate the future through its similarities with the past.”