Classes
Daddy Augustine:
Reading Confessions
Online Class
Six sessions: Saturdays, Nov 1 – Dec 13
(no class 11/29), 1:00pm – 2:30pm ET
Augustine’s Confessions is generally considered the first modern autobiography. But that doesn’t capture the strangeness or heterogeneity of the book, which includes narrative, prayer, philosophical experiment, scriptural exegesis. Augustine invents techniques that will feed into literary traditions that inform much more than memoir or autobiography; he is the inventor of much of what makes the modern novel modern.
In this online course, we will approach Augustine as a writer, paying attention to his unbridled, sometimes baroque, always performative style; his brilliant experiments (and meditations) on time; his counterpointing of life narrative and abstract reflection. Most of all, we will pay attention to how Augustine writes inwardness: how he creates new tools for the investigation of inwardness, and, maybe most important, how he makes thinking dramatic.
I first read Confessions in my early twenties, and have returned to it frequently since. When I’m asked to name a favorite book—any genre, any time, any era—nine times out of ten Confessions is the answer. Augustine is the originator of the tradition I aspire to write in, and my primary hope for this class is to reclaim the richness of that tradition—which I worry is flattened out by what seems to me the vague, largely unhelpful, mostly meaningless term, “autofiction.”
Augustine’s text is rich, and we will take our time with it, spreading our reading over six weeks. We will be using Sarah Ruden’s translation. Please get this translation if at all possible. As we will discuss, Ruden’s translation, which is brilliant (and not uncontroversial), makes choices that restore the freshness, weirdness, and contemporaneity of Augustine’s voice. If you’re familiar with classic translations of Confessions, there may be moments when Ruden’s rendering will shock you. (There certainly were for me.) I think that shock is a salutary one.
Reading Schedule
All sessions will be recorded for those who can’t attend synchronously
Nov 1: Books 1 & 2
Nov 8: Books 3, 4, & 5
Nov 15: Books 6 & 7
Nov 22: Books 8 & 9
Nov 29: No Class
Dec 6: Books 10 & 11
Dec 13: Books 12 & 13
Limited full and partial scholarships available on a rolling basis
All prices in USD.