person
also known as Yates

Historian of the Renaissance art of memory, invoked once in the series and to a precise purpose: Cameron identifies her as the source Bob is silently citing when he puts "memory theater" in quotation marks. She is the reason a phrase in the densest sentence of dialogue 73 is a reference rather than a coinage. Not to be confused with the poet W.B. Yeats, who recurs across the archive.

Across the dialogues

73

Enters as a single footnote that unlocks a sentence — the quotation marks around "memory theater" turn out to be a citation, not an authorial hedge

A reading aid offered mid-sentence — the quotation marks are doing citation work, so the memory theatre in Bob's formula is a borrowed historical form rather than a figure he invented for the occasion.

"Frances Yates did a book on memory theater, and I think that's why you have it in quotation marks."
Cameron McEwenhedgedqualifier: “I think that's why”

Connections

supplies term toMini-Module

Her memory-theatre study is the reason "memory theater" sits in quotation marks in Bob's sentence.