Giordano Bruno

Scott Gosnell

Written in 1591 and published posthumously, Bruno's Lamps of the Thirty Statues presents an advanced example of the memory palace technique, He presents a periodic table or encyclopedia of classical philosophy, representing thirty abstract ideas through images taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses. These images are then given attributes which can be combined and manipulated to address fundamental arguments and isues of philosophical interest. At the same time, he develops a theogony and a categorization scheme for substances and concepts through the framework of the scale of nature and the scale of predicates or ideas. First English Translation.

A Book of the Art of Memory & the Art of Invention

Thirty Statues

English edition. To memorize anything, distribute vivid, emotionally stirring imagined images around a piece of familiar architecture. This is the method of loci, or memory palace method, first developed in classical antiquity. Giordano Bruno perfected the art in the late 16th Century. He published a series of books on the subject, beginning with De Umbris Idearum (On the Shadows of Ideas). His work and life would lead him across the major centers of Renaissance Europe, to the patronage of kings and nobles, the scorn and envy of academics, and ultimately to his imprisonment and execution at the hands of the Roman Inquisition in 1600.Bruno's works have been reprinted periodically since his death. The current edition is the first complete English translation to be published.

On the Shadows of Ideas

De Umbris Idearum

These works on the Art of Memory bracket Giordano Bruno's ten year journey through the centers of learning in late 16th century Europe.Song of Circe was written in 1583, near the outset of Girodano Bruno's career in England as a simplified version of the memory palace technique developed in On the Shadows of Ideas, at the request of his students there. On the Composition of Ideas was Bruno's last published work in 1591, shortly before he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. Both works demonstrate the phenomenally complex scale and intricacy of the Art of Memory, incorporating the techniques described in Thirty Seals and Thirty Statues to form a truly universal imaginary inner landscape.

Scott Gosnell

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