Читать книгу Literature of the Gaelic Landscape - John Murray - Страница 10

Names people bestow on places can lend them a symbolic significance, lacking in places that are unnamed (Hough 1990). The naming and distinguishing of a territory brings life to the land and adds meaning and resonance to human experience. A named landscape can behave as a large-scale mnemonic of shared history and tradition (Lynch 1960). Gaston Bachelard coined the term topoanalysis. By which he meant the psychological study of sites where intimate chapters of our lives have occurred (Bachelard 1969). Amongst aboriginal peoples, place-names act as mnemonics for past human actions (Basso 1996 & Weiner 1991). The prefix topo- can be joined with the noun mnemonic to make the neologism - topo-mnemonic.

This word is not yet in any English dictionary. Its etymology lies in ancient Greek, from mnēmōn, meaning mindful, and tópos meaning place. In combination, these parts signify a verbal device, which helps people remember places through the recitation of place-names in a riddle, poem, rhyme or song. Topo-mnemonics can be understood as verbal equivalents of cognitive or mental maps and are complementary to them. Poets and authors may use them to define, support and inform the events in their storylines. Sometimes the topo-mnemonic can be flexible and expandable and thus it can be used to illustrate a child’s development in response to landscape, as it does for Kenn in Highland River. Two historical examples of topo-mnemonics from the southern Highlands, one supernatural and the other actual, serve to illustrate their detail, complexity and use.