In The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200, Mary Carruthers credits the work of British historian Frances Yates for her groundbreaking work on memory; however, addresses the limitations in her focus and emphasis on memory as only treating it as an instrument for storing information. Carruthers expands the scholarship initiated by Yates by stating:
"Memoria is most usefully thought of as a compositional art. The arts of memory are among the arts of thinking, especially involved with fostering the qualities we now reverse as 'imagination' and 'creativity'"
Thus, memory is not simply about being a "warehouse" for storing facts and information, but a heuristic that fosters critical thinking. In reading theories about invention, I wonder to what degree invention has been conflated with memory (historically). I believe that memory is critical in the first phase of writing when students are encouraged to confront a "friction" in their experience, or a "puzzle," which will help them to transition into inquiry, the second stage of writing.
Memoria is considered "too personal" or "intimate" to allow it to stand alonside or prior to invention as a tool for composing.
Just some thoughts....more later.
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