IMC 2018: Sessions
Session 1199: Keynote Lecture 2018: I Can't Remember the Middle Ages (Language: English)
Wednesday 4 July 2018, 13.00-14.00
| Introductions: | Lucie Doležalová, Faculty of Humanities Jan Čermák, Department of English, Univerzita Karlova, Praha |
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| Speaker: | Jeff Rider, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, Wesleyan University, Connecticut |
| Abstract | Because we remember our personal past, it is not surprising that we think of our imagination of the past in terms of memory. But memory is always personal and incommunicable. I cannot remember things I did not perceive, and I cannot communicate my memories to another person. I have to imagine any past other than my own. My memories of my past do, however, play an essential role in imagining pasts other than my own since they provide the material I use to imagine those pasts. When I imagine a past other than my own, I rearrange the stuff of my memories in new ways and this leads to new insights into my world of everyday experience and my place in it. |