Cultural Memory

Abstract

The study of culture began as the study of its history. The first scholars of culture were attracted, specifically, to differences between epochs. The distinctive identity of Hellenism or the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance or Romanticism, was based on contrasting previous epochs with that culture’s subsequent experience. Taken to its logical extreme, this principle led to a theory of closed cultures. Communication between cultures was perceived (both synchronically and diachronically) in terms of the impossibility of contact with an “alien spirit.”.