Walter Ralegh and the Arts of Memory

This article explores both the poetic and prose writing of Sir Walter Ralegh (Raleigh) in the context of early modern cultural debates surrounding memory. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which Platonic and Aristotelian thinking focused upon the faculty may be seen to have influenced Ralegh's ideas on sovereignty (most especially that of James VI/I), the role of the courtier and the undertakings of history and poetry (especially ‘The Ocean's Love to Scinthia/Cynthia’). Whether it was in the narration of the voyage to Guiana, the lyrical evocations of the travails of the courtly lover, the dramatic gestures described in his correspondence, his chronicling of the history of the world, or his arresting final performance on the scaffold, Ralegh gives evidence of a consuming interest in how memory may be seen as a strategic resource with which to formulate identity, to interrogate cultural données and to re‐configure the possibilities of human epistemology. Ralegh is considered in the course of this discussion not only in the contexts of contemporary writers (e.g. Foxe, Jonson, Donne, Bacon), but also as an object of memorialisation by later generations of critics and readers. Directly linked to this consideration of how Ralegh was remembered, this article also reflects upon modern critical controversies surrounding the limits of his authorship and the (insurmountable) difficulties involved in trying to piece together a Ralegh canon.