- Dec 2023
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www.nybooks.com www.nybooks.com
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When he recorded his observations, he adhered to the Erasmian principle of distilling things down to their essence and entering them in notebooks, as if he were storing rare wine to be served for dégustation in future conversations.
This is quite similar to the advice by Sonke Ehrens and Nikolas Luhmann.
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- May 2023
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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As they flit like so many little bees between Greek and Latin authors of every species, here noting down something to imitate, here culling some notable saying to put into practice in their behavior, there getting by heart some witty anecdote to relate among their friends, you would swear you were watching the Muses at graceful play in the lovely pastures of Mount Helicon, gathering flowers and marjoram to make well-woven garlands. —The Adages of Erasmus
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- Aug 2022
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thoughtcatalog.com thoughtcatalog.com
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Montaigne once teased the writer Erasmus, who was known for his dedication to reading scholarly works, by asking with heavy sarcasm “Do you think he is searching in his books for a way to become better, happier, or wiser?” In Montaigne’s mind, if he wasn’t, it was all a waste.
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- May 2022
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Local file Local file
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Popularized in a previous period of information overload, theIndustrial Revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, the commonplace book was more than a diary or journalof personal reflections
Commonplace books were popularized in the late 1400s/early 1500s in handbooks by Desiderius Erasmus, Philip Melanchthon, Rudolphus Agricola, and others along with the rise and accessibility of printed books.
Would have been nice to have some more background and history on their development and evolution. Mentions of florilegia, vade mecum, others perhaps? Other cultures?
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- Apr 2022
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Local file Local file
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She frequently cites authors second-hand(“as quoted by”, “see,” etc.) rather than primary texts, and in some instancesthis practice results in the kinds of errors for which earlier compilations werecriticized. The most egregious of these occurs when Blair cites Ann Moss on
Guarino da Verona when making the unlikely claim that note taking begin in earnest with Francesco Sacchini in the seventeenth century rather than a hundred years earlier with Erasmus and Vives.
I almost feel like I've arrived as I noticed this error in the text myself.
Interesting that he calls her out for making a compilation error, something which is very meta with respect to this particular text.
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Although humanists like Guarino da Verona(1370–1460), Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), and Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540)explained the principles of the commonplace book that collected phrases worthyof imitation under topical headings, they did not offer detailed practical advice
in print.33
- Moss (1996), 54–55. For Guarino’s methods, see the treatise by his son Battista in Guarino (2002); Erasmus discusses commonplacing in De copia and De ratione studii (Basel, 1512), in Erasmus (1978), 605–6, 636–38, 672; Vives does so in De tradendis disciplinis (1531), in Vives (1971), 108, 133
Double check what Erasmus has to say as it would seem that Earle Havens contradicts this in Commonplace Books (Yale University Press, 2001). Perhaps its a difference of degree? I seem to recall that he indicated that Erasmus helped to popularize commonplacing practice.
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- Nov 2021
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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pedagogues in the humanist tradition, from Erasmus to Drexel,were routinely hostile to the arts of memory.
On Erasmus’s preference for “study, order and care” over places and images, see Erasmus,De ratione studii(1512), quoted in Yates,The Art of Memory,p. 127
What other pedagogues were hostile to memory?
This is another point in the decline of memory traditions from the 1500s onward.
What effect did cheaper books and paper have on this decline?
Keep in mind that Erasmus had written a treatise on commonplacing which was also a point in the history of note taking though Blair doesn't acknowledge his contributions in her list here. Also Agricola and Melanchthon
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- May 2021
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forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
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MMScotofGlasgow
@MMScotofGlasgow, Hopefully it's not too late...
Francis Yates discusses Petrus Ramus as an educational reformer in Chapter 10 and onward in The Art of Memory. There she outlines Ramus' crusade against images (based in part on the admonition from 4 Deuteronomy about graven images) and on their prurient use (sex, violence, etc.) which were meant to make things more memorable. Ramism caught on in the late 1500's and essentially removed memory by the root from the subject of rhetoric of which it had been an integral part. Ramus felt that structure and rote memorization would suffice in its stead. As a result the method of loci decreased in prominence in schools and disappeared from the scene based on educational reform which was primarily pushed by Huguenot/Protestants. I've not read anywhere that the practice was ever banned, it just fell out of fashion due to these reforms.
I'm sure it didn't help that printed books became ever cheaper during/after this time and so the prior need to memorize for those reasons wasn't helped either.
I'm sure another confounding factor was Erasmus' Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style (1512) which dramatically popularized the keeping and use of commonplace books by the learned and literate. These became a regular place in which people collected and kept their thoughts and ideas rather than memorizing them as they may have done in the past.
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