Fragmentary Voices Memory and Education at Port-Royal

A study of the conscious shaping of memory within the community known as Port-Royal in seventeenth-century France, whose members thought that memory could contribute to the new ideas which they had about education. Concentrating on memoirs in the first chapter and on various educational treatises in the second, Hammond explores many previously unknown works. Port-Royal was to a large extent responsible for producing two of the greatest writers of the age, Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine; Hammond devotes a chapter to each. The role of memory in the persuasive process of Pascalʼs Pensées is shown to be vital to a full understanding of the work.