Mary Carruthers

“My point in setting these two descriptions up in this way is simply this: the nature of creative activity itself – what the brain does, and the social and psychic conditions needed for its nurture – has remained essentially the same between Thomas’s time and our own. Human beings did not suddenly acquire imagination and intuition with Coleridge, having previously been poor clods. The difference is that whereas now geniuses are said to have creative imagination which they express in intricate reasoning and original discovery, in earlier times they were said to have richly retentive memories, which they expressed in intricate reasoning and original discovery.”
― Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture

“Ancient Greek had no verb meaning “to read” as such: the verb they used, anagignsk, means “to know again,” “to recollect.” It refers to a memory procedure. Similarly, the Latin verb used for “to read” is lego, which means literally “to collect” or “to cull, pluck,” referring also to a memory procedure (the re-collection or gathering up of material).”
― Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture