However, this move is wholly justified by the dictates of source analysis. For example, when reference is made to the cult of Neith within Saite theology, it is mentioned only as possible background for Proclus' version of the veiled image. By all accounts, the argumentation is incredibly rapid. Of course, this essay, part of a series of lectiones Teubnerianae , was designed as a public lecture. When the knowledge-guilt problem does resurface, it is raised in connection first with Apuleian and Augustinian curiositas , and then with the figure of the periergos found throughout the Corpus Hermeticum .
Little work is expended to situate the texts historically.
Instead, the reader is invited to participate in a kind of literary flanerie that simply collects the fragments of many histories. This is the major consequence of a mnemohistorical approach. I hardly view it as a failure but rather see it as a potentially useful contribution to more conventional methods of scholarly research. Insofar as it is interested in how the past is structured by the present, mnemohistory brings historical research closer to the conceptual perspective and sophistication of literary reception theory. Such an interdisciplinary alliance is crucial for our understanding of the processes of tradition, both on a broadly cultural level as well as on a narrower, specifically literary level.