The main aim of this research is to show how the concept of home and its relation to memories was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to reflect on how the quarantine led to a variety of new experiences, which themselves led to the a new perception of space.
The project focuses on the works of Frances Yates (The Art of Memory, 1993) and Paul Connerton (How Modernity Forgets, 2009, and How Societies Remember, 1994), authors who were especially influential in defining the role of homes in shaping our memories, and proceeds comparing their theories with witness accounts given by European citizens in journals, blogs and video diaries - writings that highlighted the new perception that the quarantine has given people about their homes. This historical-anthropological approach is combined with the literary prospective given by the reference to Rainer Maria Rilke's theory on the link between objects, houses and memory, expressed in The Notebooks of Malte Lauris Brigge (1910).
The study shows that COVID-19 pandemic contributed to discover new memory keepers in the household: items and places that play a now more important part in the everyday life and change our way to recollect; it also underlines how this time requires a different approach to home and to its role in shaping memory patterns.
Bibliography:
Armeni, Ritanna, Auci, Stefani, Basso, Alice et. alii, Andrà tutto bene. Gli scrittori ai tempi della quarantena, Milano: Garzanti 2020.
Carruhters, Mary, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990.
Connerton, Paul, How Modernity Forgets, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009.
Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989. Dattrino, Luca, I diari della quarantena, Lugano: FontanaEdizioni 2020.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, Gesammelte Werke, Bonn: Lempertz Verlag 2006.
Tinkler-Villani, Valeria (v.e.), Babylon or the New Jerusalem?, Rodopi: Amsterdam 2005.
Yates, Frances, The Art of Memory, New York: Penguin Random House 1993.
