THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITTLE POETS’ CORNER BETWEEN CULTURAL MEMORY AND GEOPOLITICS

Abstract

As Jan Assmann writes, the conceptof “cultural memory” both “draws our attention to the role of the past in constituting our world” and also investigates “the motives that prompt our recourse to it” (ix). Cultural memory is transmitted through a variety of mediators ranging from texts and images to commemorative sites, whose complex aesthetic and ideological configurations – whether associated with trauma or glory – are a source of great interest. In hisNew Science(1725–44), Giambattista Vico claimed that “humanitasin Latin comes first and properly fromhumando” (8), highlighting the importance burial rituals had in the creation of civilised society. The commemoration of the dead is indeed at the core of cultural memory as the foundation on which the social compact between the living and the dead rests.