On Forgetting

Alma Prelec; Emily Di Dodo

On Forgetting

Edited by Alma Prelec and Emily Di Dodo

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MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 17

Modern Humanities Research Association

30 December 2022

‘With no effort, he had learned English, French, Portuguese and Latin. I suspect, however, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence.’ ― Borges, Funes el memorioso

The eponymous character of Borges’ Funes el memorioso [Funes the Memorious] has the Midas Touch in mnemonic form. His mind is an encyclopaedia involuntarily updated in real time, each experience another page in a tome with no page limit and no editor. Midas’ gift was also his downfall, and Borges’ protagonist would also go on to be shackled by this extraordinary ability to retain knowledge. Weighed down by the volume of minutia, by the burden of recollection, Funes could not think.

Taking inspiration from Funes’ ‘problem’, this issue of the MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities explores not memory, but its loss — intentional, accidental, pathological, coercive, natural, endemic, etc. — across diverse forms of artistic media. Associated since the Greeks with the river Lethe, forgetfulness is often seen as a negative despite also possessing powerful creative potential. Elliptical narration provides a device for rendering crucial but traumatic moments implicit; literary omissions invite readers to complete the narrative themselves. Memory’s ‘blanks’ need not lead to blanks on the page: in the pages that follow, the notion of forgetting is brought to the fore.

See news item: Call for Papers - On Forgetting (21 February 2022)

Contents:

1-5	On Forgetting Alma Prelec, Emily Di Dodo	Read Cite
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6-14	‘Tutto avem veduto’? Enumeration and ‘Forgetfulness’ in Dante’s Commedia J. C. Wiles	Read Cite
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15-24	Lost and Found: Dream Memory on the Early Modern French Stage Daniel Clark	Read Cite
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25-34	(Mis)remembering Bertha Harris Catherine Kelly	Read Cite
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35-44	Commemoration and Forgetting: Lamartine’s Lost Afterlife Tim Farrant	Read Cite
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45-53	On Museums, Conflict, and Forgetting: An Immutable Cultural Heritage? Stuart Bowes	Read Cite
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54-62	Translating Traumatic Memories: What is Forgotten in the English Translation of Mercè Rodoreda’s El carrer de les Camèlies? Daisy Towers	Read Cite
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63-74	Dwelling with Traumatic Memory through Embodied Drawing in the Structure of Graphic Novels Gareth Brookes	Read Cite
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Cite this volume in standard MHRA style

Bibliography entry:

Prelec, Alma, and Emily Di Dodo (eds), On Forgetting (= MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, 17 (2022)) <https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/wph-17> [accessed 1 December 2023]

First footnote reference: ³⁵ On Forgetting, ed. by Alma Prelec and Emily Di Dodo (= MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, 17 (2022)) <https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/wph-17> [accessed 1 December 2023], p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: ³⁷ Prelec and Dodo, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Cite this volume in MHRA author-date style

Bibliography entry:

Prelec, Alma, and Emily Di Dodo (eds). 2022. On Forgetting (= MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, 17) <https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/wph-17> [accessed 1 December 2023]

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Prelec and Dodo 2022: 21).

Example footnote reference: ³⁵ Prelec and Dodo 2022: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Permanent link to this title:

www.mhra.org.uk/publications/On-Forgetting
www.mhra.org.uk/publications/wph-17