For an epistemological and cognitive approach to Matteo Ricci’s The Palace of Memory: didactics and imaginative processes

In this chapter, we examine The Palace of Memory by Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit who in 1577 arrived in China not only with a solid cultural background but also a mnemonic technique that would allow him to carry his knowledge across China. He taught a method of memorization and proposed a new didactization of written Chinese. On the one hand, our epistemological analysis focuses on the origins and consequences of the metalanguage used by Ricci and its didactic consequences. On the other hand, we examine these concepts from a perspective speciF Gc to psychology and cognitive linguistics.