"The Confessions of St. Augustine"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the work "The Confessions of St. Augustine" by Augustine of Hippo, who was the bishop of Hippo in Roman Africa for 35 years, during the time of the decline of Roman civilization on that continent. It discusses how the work is an autobiographical account of his life and how Augustine shows the depth of his religious belief and writes extensively about his own inner turmoil about such events in his life as the time when he was a child and stole pears from a neighbors tree, a crime that haunted him for the rest of his life.

From the Paper:

"Robert J. O'Connell emphasizes the problem created for readers by the mixture of autobiography and philosophical discussion, especially in trying to reconcile the autobiographical portion of the book, covering Books I-IX, and the final four books. Augustine examines the present state of his soul in Book X. That examination begins, however, with a lengthy discussion of "memory." Some authors see Book X as a later interpolation, but this does not explain how Augustine interprets those parts of the Scripture that he includes. The meaning of the last three books has been argued for centuries, and the implication is that when the meaning is understood, their relationship to the preceding books will be made clear: "The problem of the work's unity may well be one with the problem of its meaning" (O'Connell 6)."

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