Abstract: In his essay, “The Palimpsest”, De Quincey contends that a man's various experiences are stored as memories in his mind just as the texts are accumulated on the palimpsest. This simile not only reflects the nexus between the British Romantic literature and brain science in the 19^th century, but also embodies the anatomical microstructure of the human brain. The concept of “brain text”, proposed by Nie Zhenzhao in recent years, could open up much broader room in interpreting De Quincey's palimpsest model of human brian. The ideas, images, and feelings that are related to certain memories and inscribed on the palimpsest formulate a special kind of brain text, which must be edited and processed into a literary brain text and shown in the written form before they can be seen and understood by the reader. De Quincey's use of the “digression” technique in his writing indicates that the autobiographical content he relies on comes from his palimpsest of memory in the brain. In the process of transcribing his literary brain texts through writing, De Quincey endows the palimpsest model with unique ethical values, through which he attempts to eliminate both his personal and the British Empire's sense of guilt.

Key words: De Quincey, "palimpsest", brain science, brain text