The Ruin: An Old English Mnemonic?

Abstract

Despite the generally accepted scholarly opinion that the three rhetorical manuals describing the method of loci and its accompanying origin legend were unknown in early medieval England (i.e. Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero’s De oratore, and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria), I argue that the Old English poem, The Ruin, suggests otherwise. By examining the features that overlap between the method of loci as described in these rhetorical texts, Mary Carruthers’ argument for a uniquely “monastic memoria” that was ubiquitous in the early medieval period, and The Ruin, I suggest that the Rhetorica ad Herennium provides a good accounting for some of the oddly specific descriptive details the poem is best known for. Moreover, as the poem is fundamentally concerned with the power of remembering to bring order to chaos, The Ruin bears a striking resemblance to the origin legend of the method of loci. Evidence of the influence of the method of loci and its origin legend on Old English literature requires that we rethink how well the extant manuscript record represents both the state of learning in, and the transfer of knowledge throughout, early medieval Britain.