ABSTRACT

Eighteenth-century psychology explains the operation of memory in terms of the laws of association. In a letter to George Crabbe of 1818, Scott refers to the association of ideas as ‘the universal pick-lock of all metaphysical difficulties…when [he] studied moral philosophy’.3 This chapter will examine the way in which Scott brings eighteenth-century theories of memory into the writing of fiction. It will focus on associationist psychology and the act of literary creation as a means of exploring the role of memory in narrative composition.