Memoria - Memory and Kairos

Memory and Kairos

Memory, the fourth canon of rhetoric, and invention, the first canon of rhetoric, are connected. The ad Herennium states that memory is the “treasury of things invented.” This indirectly refers to the custom of accumulating commonplaces. Hence, for a rhetor, memory is as much related to the need to extemporize as it is to the necessity to memorize an entire discourse for delivery; in this way, memory is linked to kairos and to the ideas of copia and amplification (Burton). Crowley and Hawhee state about memory and kairos, "... kairos and memory were partnered in several ways. First, both require a kind of 'attunement' in that the rhetor who is gathering items for reserve in the memory must be thinking simultaneously about what's available now that might be useful later. Secondly, memory requires an attunement during the moment of speaking or composing, a recognition of the right time for recalling an illustrative example, an argument, and so on" (317).