In the previous chapter it became clear that the characters and audience are expected to use their memories in imaginative ways in order to establish connections between past and present. The mental challenge was intensified by the drama of present “forests,” or the adverse effects that a perpetually present situation could have on the character's reputation, loved one, and life. Likewise, the audience is placed under a similar pressure – they must protect the character they have been following and also, by remembering details of the plot, maintain the thematic and moral unity of that particular romance such as the celebration of loyalty in Sir Orfeo or the importance of chivalric oaths and promises in Sir Gawain. Romances, however, do not leave a character and the audience completely adrift during their recollective efforts. Firstly, the tales assure us that such memory work will be worthwhile: upon reaching the target of the memorial meditations there will be a joyous celebration. It can take many forms, frequently at the reunion of two separated parties or when a knight returns safely to the court. There is an inherent understanding that the demands made of memory during the narrative will be rewarded and this confidence is supported by memorial markers or clues which are strategically placed within each narrative.

Here we will examine the variety of such clues, beginning with a discussion of memorial objects which link past and present in ingenious ways, marking not only a progression of time but the development of a character and progression of a narrative. They are immediate and vital to a present moment but they also look back to their previous appearances in the tale and the careful consideration of where and when such occurences happened can reveal insights into future events. In a similar way so too do a romance's more abstract memorial markers, specifically dreams, and we will then examine how visions, as imagistic premonitions of future events, are recorded in memory until they are ready to be recollected and their abstract elements replaced with the real figures and landscapes of a present situation.