According to Jan Assmann, culture reflects the forms of thought, mentality, and spiritual activities of individuals and groups in the arts, symbols, rituals, language, and forms of organization of life and forms a universal field of the interaction of mindset, practices, and social institutions (Erll & Nünning, 2010, pp. 109-110). Therefore, cultural memory can be understood as a form of translation and updating of the cultural meanings. At the same time, it is an umbrella term for all the "knowledge" that controls emotions, actions, and practices throughout the life of people in the framework of communication and interaction in social groups and society as a whole and which is to be repeated and memorized from one generation to another. Within this framework, cultural memory differs from both science and communicative memory that is based on the everyday experience of individuals and groups (Erll & Nünning, 2010, p. 109). Yassman states that communicative memory is little formalized; rather, it is an oral tradition that occurs in the context of the interactive human relationships in everyday life, i.e., a kind of "living remembrance", “lieux de mémoire,” that exists for three generations: children - fathers – grandfathers (Erll & Nünning, 2010, p. 111). Its young age (80-100 years) and the lack of universally accepted "fixed points" that link it with the deep past, primarily distinguish the communicative memory from the cultural one (Erll & Nünning, 2010, p. 113). Cultural memory, by contrast, is formed over the centuries. It is characterized by a high degree of formalization, and it appears in the ceremonial communication. J. Assmann believed that texts, images, monumental structures such as the pyramids of Egypt, the inscriptions and images in them represented "the fixed points" or the "objectified forms" of cultural memory (Erll & Nünning, 2010, p. 115). For instance, the rituals and sacred acts, as the institutionalized forms of communication, are the examples of the forms of memories that will rise over time.
Modern cultural studies hypothesize that the cultural evolution replaced the biological evolution, and thus, the term "cultural gene" came into existence (Heinrich & Weyland, 2016, p. 28). Literature allows isolating and exploring this cultural gene, which is important for both the study of the past and the reflection on the present. In a sense, one could argue that the literature is the result of the formalization of cultural memory. Literature, has similarities with the mechanisms of memory even in technical terms, because any text is nothing else than an imitation of the march of memory. It is not essential to give any specific examples in the form of literary works in order to understand this theory. It is enough to comprehend that literature is the best method of storing information of any type, i.e. of practical, technical, and cultural types. Records of ideas, knowledge, and experience represent the essential aspect of the story that makes the literature one of the main sources of acquisition and preservation of self-identity. Literature, due to its complex and contradictory nature, always takes an active part in shaping the scope and guiding principles of cultural memory and sometimes determines the logic of its future development. Many works of art reflect the era and cultural trends in which they were created. They offer readers a vast selection of various persistent and future problems. Hence, the majority of literary texts concentrate almost all issues of their time and, therefore, literature is an ideal scientific matter for the study of the phenomenon of cultural memory.
Thus, it should be said that literature contributes to the development and preservation of cultural memory and is also involved in the formation of cultural identity of both an individual and an entire nation. For example, the various ancient methods of recording historical data helped to keep a huge reservoir of cultural foundation of the ancient civilizations, preserving their cultural identity for millennia.
References
Erll, A., & Nünning, A. (Eds.). (2010). Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin/Boston, DE: De Gruyter. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com
Heinrich, H., & Weyland, V. (2016). Communicative and cultural memory as a micro-meso-macro relation. International Journal Of Media & Cultural Politics, 12(1), 27-41. doi:10.1386/macp.12.1.27_1
