Items related to Images of Conversion in St. Augustine's Confessions

Images of Conversion in St. Augustine's Confessions - Hardcover

O'Connell S.J., Robert J.

 
9780823215980: Images of Conversion in St. Augustine's Confessions
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0823215989 ISBN 13: 9780823215980
Publisher: Fordham University Press, 1996

Synopsis

In his preceding work, Soundings in Augustine's Imagination, Father O'Connell outlined the three basic images Augustine employs to frame his view of the human condition. In the present study, he applies the same techniques of image-analysis to the three major "conversions" recounted in the Confessions. Those conversions were occasioned, first, by Augustine's youthful reading of Cicero's Hortensius, then by his reading of what he calls the "books of the Platonists," and finally, most decisively, by his fateful reading in that Milanese garden of the explosive capitulum, or "chapterlet," from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Dissection of Augustine's imagery discloses a chain of striking connections between these conversions. Each of them, for instance, features a return to a woman - now a bridal, now a maternal figure, and finally, a mysterious stand-in for Divine Wisdom, both bridal and maternal. Unsurprisingly, conversion-imagery also provokes a fresh estimate of the sexual component in Augustine's religious biography; but the sexual aspect is balanced by Augustine's insistent stress on the "vanity" of his worldly ambitions. Perhaps most arresting of all is Father O'Connell's analysis showing that the text that Augustine read from Romans consisted of not only two, but four verses: hence the dramatic procession of images which make up the structure of the Confessions, Book VII; hence, too, the presence, subtle but real, of those same image-complexes in the Dialogues Augustine composed soon after his conversion in A.D. 386.

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About the Author

Robert J. O’Connell, S. J. was a Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. His has five publications on St. Augustine, as well as several studies of Plato, William James, and Teilhard de Chardin. In 2015 he established the O’Connell established the O’Connell Initiative at Fordham, a forum for intellectual exploration, that brought together scholars of every aspect of capitalism.

From the Back Cover

In his preceding work, Soundings in Augustine's Imagination, Father O'Connell outlined the three basic images Augustine employs to frame his view of the human condition. In the present study, he applies the same techniques of image-analysis to the three major "conversions" recounted in the Confessions. Those conversions were occasioned, first, by Augustine's youthful reading of Cicero's Hortensius, then by his reading of what he calls the "books of the Platonists", and finally, most decisively, by his fateful reading in that Milanese garden of the explosive capitulum, or "chapterlet", from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Dissection of Augustine's imagery discloses a chain of striking connections between these conversions. Each of them, for instance, features a return to a woman - now a bridal, now a maternal figure, and finally, a mysterious stand-in for Divine Wisdom, both bridal and maternal. Unsurprisingly, conversion-imagery also provokes a fresh estimate of the sexual component in Augustine's religious biography; but the sexual aspect is balanced by Augustine's insistent stress on the "vanity" of his worldly ambitions. Perhaps most arresting of all is Father O'Connell's analysis showing that the text that Augustine read from Romans consisted of not only two, but four verses: hence the dramatic procession of images which make up the structure of the Confessions, Book VII; hence, too, the presence, subtle but real, of those same image-complexes in the Dialogues Augustine composed soon after his conversion in A.D. 386.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Fordham University Press
Publication date
1996
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0823215989
ISBN 13 
9780823215980
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
327