The Pleasures of Memory in Shakespeare's Sonnets

FAIN: FT-278708-21

John S. Garrison
Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA 50112-2227)

Research and writing towards a book about memory as it appears in William Shakespeare’s sonnets.

This fellowship would allow me to complete my current book project, “The Pleasures of Memory in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” The volume, under contract with Oxford University Press, analyzes this famous set of poems in order to contribute to the larger, interdisciplinary study of memory. The book contends that modern scientific accounts of how memories are formed leave out the possibility of agential techniques for memory making, techniques that were explored by a number of early modern thinkers including Shakespeare. By drawing upon insights from contemporary neuroscience, psychoanalytic theory, and what early modern writers called “the art of memory,” the book explores the notion that we begin to prefigure pleasurable experiences in our minds based not just on past recollection but also on hope for how our future self will look back upon them.