Gower is the first English writer to use "history" as an English word. He regularly rhymes the term with "memory, " for to his way of thinking history and memory are correlative. That is, without history, there can be no memory; and without memory, there can be no history. But the point of historical knowledge is not to enable people to live in the past, or even to understand the past in the way we would expect a modern historian to proceed; rather, it is to enable people to live more vitally in the present. .Russell A. Peck
About This Quote
The term "history" defines the past, but Gower adds the word "memory" to explain how it can help us live more fully in the present. He uses this idea to explain the purpose of historical records. Without them, he claims, there would be no memory to which we could refer. And without memory, living would be impossible.
Source: Confessio Amantis, Volume 2
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