Song of Circe & On the Composition of Images: Two Books of the Art of Memory (Collected Works of Giordano Bruno)

These works on the Art of Memory bracket Giordano Bruno’s ten year journey through the centers of learning in late 16th century Europe.Song of Circe was written in 1583, near the outset of Girodano Bruno’s career in England as a simplified version of the memory palace technique developed in On the Shadows of Ideas, at the request of his students there. On the Composition of Ideas was Bruno’s last published work in 1591, shortly before he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. Both works demonstrate the phenomenally complex scale and intricacy of the Art of Memory, incorporating the techniques described in Thirty Seals and Thirty Statues to form a truly universal imaginary inner landscape.