The theory and practice of note-taking were matters of concern for Renaissance humanists. They recommended commonplace books as stores of copious literary material for use in speeches and writing; but these notebooks were regarded as tools for training and improving recall from memory, not as substitutes for it. This article examines the operation of this assumption and the challenges to it that appeared, especially during the 17th century. There was a shift away from notebooks as memory prompts so that they began to be seen as external sources from which information might be retrieved when needed. This development involved a profound re-assessment of the cultural status of memory.
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