Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 3, December 2009
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Favorini, Attilio. Memory in Play: From Aeschylus to Sam Shepard. New York, Palgrave, Macmillan, 2008. 323, ISBN- 13: 978-0-230-60464-3 ; ISBN- 10: 0-230-60464-1; ISBN 0-230-6046-1(alk.paper); $80 Hbk
Reviewed by
Middle East Technical University
If ever a master-class or a refreshers’ session is to be structured to “refresh memories” of highly advanced scholars, Attilio Favorini’s book will be an invaluable reference material for the scholars to go through to recollect all the sources of scholarly work ranging from Aeschylus to Sam Shepard. Not only the book will appeal to theatre scholars, theatre historians, and dramatists but it will also appeal to neuroscientists, neurobiologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, philosophers, psychologists, and of course “memographer”s. Hence a multidisciplinary book.
The book has 6 major Chapters but even the Introduction is a comprehensive and detailed section. Each section including the preliminary pages has its own master quotation by Charles Dickens, John Sutton, Edward Casey, Patrick Hutton, Michael S. Roth, Sigmund Freud, Freud and Breuer, St. Augustine, Pierre Janet. Chapters 5 and 6 do not have beginning quotations.
The notes that follow the main text are detailed and explanatory. A comprehensive “Works Cited” section has been provided with an Index to end the book.
The Chapters are episodic with relevant “entrance”s and “exit”s. The overall style is composed of advanced discourse with sophisticated vocabulary ranging from Favorini’s own coinage, memographer and the derivatives of the same word, memorative,memoriousness, memorialist, memoration to advanced vocabulary such as veridicality, extirpation, mentation, the keyword of the work being mnemonic.
Favorini has employed the first person narration technique to clearly indicate what he meant to do when he wrote his book.
In the Acknowledgements Section, Favorini presents his classification of the book as “ a work of theatre history”. In the Introduction, he gives a detailed foreknowledge of what is expected in the coming chapters. It is almost like an amplified abstract introducing the whole book concisely.
In Chapter 1, Favorini traces plays that are specifically about “memory” and takes the reader to the ancient times. He goes over Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on memory, moves through the Medieval times, a period when “devotional dimension” of memory was highlighted. The Medieval and Renaissance theories of memory have a global nature. In the Renaissance Period, Giordano Bruno’s works cannot be overlooked where “Neo-platonism, Renaissance magic, Copernican Science, and Petrarchan conceits” combined. To clarify the influence of Giordano Bruno’s ideas on Shakespeare, a case study of Hamlet and Pericles is provided. For Favorini, the two plays are linked as far as memory is concerned in that Pericles in a way “un-writes” Hamlet. Hamlet is a memory play comprising all the remembering responsibilities of Hamlet. In Pericles however, Pericles tries to “un-remeber” the events he has encountered. A detailed analysis of the two plays are given to show the employment of memory. Clearly throughout history, “memory systems” have been intriguing. In every episode, detailed referencing has been used. This Chapter focuses on the History of Memory as the name of the chapter implies. Where necessary, case studies are provided to depict the exploration of memory.
In Chapter 2, Favorini starts with a case study on Aeschylus’s The Persians to show how history is remembered in drama, that is to say how each period remembers the previous period in drama. In a way, each construction of a previous period becomes the construction of the future period. Here, Favorini wants to highlight how history and memory may meet at a certain point and yet set apart again in different directions and how in drama “manufactured memories” can manifest themselves and how in playwright Peter Shaffer’s words history can be used “as a groundwork”. Favorini notes that, at times, it is found convenient to disremember history.
In Chapter 3, Favorini claims that the modern theatre is the theatre of memory. Having explored history of memory and memory of history, the author now moves onto the theatre of memory. In this Chapter, Favorini presents two case studies: one comprising ideas of Janet, Freud, Ibsen, Stringberg; and the other comprising a study in collective memory.
In Chapter 4, Favorini does not use any case studies but his analyses of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller clearly exemplify the “memory play”. At the same time, Favorini provides his own comprehensive definition of the memory play.
In Chapter 5, Favorini explores the major issues of how to determine individual memory, “how brains, selves, societies remember”, how memory exists outside the mind. The interesting observation is that “self” is regarded as “a memory-theatre” “in which scenes of identity are enacted and reenacted”. Favorini’s major authoritative references in this Chapter are Beckett, Pinter, and Gerald Edelman.
In Chapter 6, Favorini explores the most difficult aspect of memory. While memory performs the task to remember, it may have to forget too. When history is encountered and especially painful and shameful events are brought to the platform of memory to be remembered, there may be a tendency to avoid this encounter, as is the case in the holocaust. Here, what is to be represented is restructring the painful events by means of individual and collective memories. The individual “may resent, resist, or reject”. The author provides Jewish examples and case studies comprising African-American commemorative drama and Native American drama. Especially in the cases of communities who have “marginalized status” the memory play assumes harder tasks. Finally, in this Chapter the most crucial issue is raised. “Which is the better choice? To remember or to forget?”. Favorini presents his final case studies observing the works of Emily Mann and Anna Deavere Smith. Mann deals with documentary dramas focusing on “traumatic themes of the twentieth century”. Anna Deavere Smith who is an African-American is interested in oral history being an oral memorialist as well as writing documentary plays.
Favorini has written a comprehensive book on memory and how “Mnemosyne:Godess of Memory” can rule individuals who have memory. Yet, memory can have individuals too. Favorini presents memory as “soul and master organizer of the mind” and explores this challenging phenomenon in theatre and what happens in plays as far as “memory” is concerned thus creating a detailed book with a new look on history of theatre.