«La memoria de omne deleznadera es»: oralidad, textualidad y medios de transmisión en la Edad Media

Abstract

Along this work I` ll try to show an important and relatively neglected episode related with the transition between oral and written mediums of communication at the end of Middle Ages. In this case I` ll point out the role of memory just in the moment in which its duty as transmitting of thought and culture is almost being substituted by written word. In order to do it, first of all I justify the importance of memory as cognitive capacity, the opportunity of the attention that cognitive linguistic is giving to it and its role in oral societies. After that, I study memory as a rhetorical operation, its prevalence along Middle Ages and the influence that its perceptive could have at the beginning of romance literature. Finally I focus the attention on medieval Castilian texts to observe the details of its valuation. Then I can check that insofar as writing gains ground, the wideness of knowledge is each time bigger, and the literate groups increase their presence in any field of life, there is a progressive doubt about the capacity of memory to retain the whole knowledge and therefore, its lost of value further on a simple deposit.