In his book Twilight Memories Andreas Huyssen (1995) famously described contemporary Western culture as 'a culture of amnesia'. That concern about social memory is evident in many areas of contemporary discourse. Social memory's confabulatory, subjective, and ambiguous nature makes its analysis an arena of conflicting and diverse opinions. Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs' concept of 'collective memory', and its use in more recent sociological studies, this study uses preaching theory and practice as a way of addressing those wider memory concerns in the life of the church. In particular, the profound challenge of memory work to Christianity's insistence on remembrance as the foundation of its authenticity is examined through contemporary homiletic practice. It is argued that, alongside the familiar didactic, cognitive, epistemological and contextual categories employed in preaching practice, the current crisis of memory requires a new emphasis on memory maintenance. Sermons are presented as mnemonic events essential to the ongoing living tradition of the faith.

This dissertation investigates the relationship between György Ligeti’s soundmass works and the musical past. After his emigration in 1956, Ligeti (1923-2006) gained renown for his sound-mass style, exemplified in works such as Apparitions (1958- 59), Atmosphères (1961), Requiem (1963-65) and Lontano (1967). These works minimize the perceptual salience of melody, rhythm and harmony, instead foregrounding orchestral clusters and thus suggesting that timbre is the central compositional issue. Despite his immersion in the creative atmosphere of the Darmstadt circle, Ligeti’s soundmass works diverged from the serial, pointillist style that preoccupied the European avant-garde at the time. However, I argue that Ligeti’s distance from the Darmstadt avant-garde is only apparent. In fact, this milieu served as his primary socio-cultural reference point after his emigration. The concept of “historical memory,” following from the work of French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945), suggests that Ligeti’s understanding of the musical past was deeply shaped by the collective interpretations in circulation amongst the Darmstadt avant-garde circle. Analysis of Ligeti’s sketches, writings and scores shows that he recollected historical influences that were important in the discourses of his milieu and redeployed them in his sound-mass works. For example, Ligeti’s Apparitions shows traces of the analyses of Debussy’s Jeux that were produced by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Atmosphères, though it is an acoustic work, reflects the collective representation of electronic music that had developed at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne. The Darmstadt composers’ sustained interest in the concept of Klangfarbenmelodie, as practiced by both Schoenberg and Webern, informs Ligeti’s use of timbre in Lontano and the Cello Concerto. Finally, Ligeti capitalizes upon the popularity of Webern around Darmstadt, using Webern’s music as an opportunity to recast Bartók’s achievements to his new Western European colleagues in the Requiem. Ligeti’s renegotiation of the musical past, within the discourses of his Darmstadt avantgarde milieu, was crucial for his composition of the sound-mass works. / text

This thesis reconsiders Maurice Halbwachs' theory of collective memory in terms of rhetoric. My purpose is to examine specifically how fading generations conform the present to the past as they fight to maintain and defend their collective identities. Although rhetoric and memory studies have often focused on the complex matters of national collectives, Halbwachs was also concerned with the individual and his or her interaction among those groups that matter in everyday living and memory's role in generational shifts that slowly transform culture. Halbwachs' theory helps determine exactly how attempts at conflict resolution are sometimes guarded defenses against threats to one's personal and collective identity. In contrast to the generally accepted use of memory as selectively adapting the past for present purposes, this protection of identity may require the present to remain faithful to one's past. To examine how memory and rhetoric are complementary, I draw a parallel between Maurice Halbwachs' collective memory theory and Jim Corder's notion of individual identity as historical narrative. Then, in further retracing Kenneth Burke's influence on Corder's work, I also compare Halbwachs' social constructionist view of memory to Burke's theories of symbolicity and identification. Finally, I apply these theories to the recent 2012 debate in Ybor City, Florida over the Spanish spelling of Seventh Avenue in which passing generations struggle to preserve their identity and sense of belonging in the changing social milieu. In demonstrating how people seek a more permanent sense of identity articulated through memory, this debate offers an alternative to the theory of identity as a rhetorical performance negotiated in the present.

Memory and nostalgia work in complex, paradoxical ways in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and The Road, both haunting the main protagonists, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and the father, as well as bringing them to crucial realizations. These men give up the traditional hero role for the more meaningful and generative image of “carrying the fire,” which unites these two novels. Carrying the fire represents a memorial and nostalgic longing for home and family. Bell and the father attain this vision because of their obsession with the past, and because of their struggle with memory and nostalgia. Memory, for these characters, has both personal and collective dimensions. Nostalgia, likewise, has a dual function, following Svetlana Boym's definition of nostalgics as being capable of restorative and reflective longing for the past. Family, or Paul Ricœur’s theory of close relations, bridges the gap between the conflicts of memory and nostalgia, acting as the means by which they understand this vision of carrying the fire while also embodying it. Additionally, the duality of both memory and nostalgia drive Bell and the father to seek for a prophetic vision, for stability in the past to deal with the threats in the present, which appears in the narrative structures of each novel.