Roman Literature: Selected Author or Authors: Augustine's Confessions (LA)

Augustine's Confessions at once draws on a profound engagement with classical literature and philosophy and yet, with its detailed account of its subject's intellectual and spiritual development, its profound re-imagining of time and memory, and its radical form, as a prayer to God overheard by the reader, seems strikingly modern. This course offers a chance to read substantial sections of the work in the original Latin with particular attention to Augustine's attitudes to classical culture and where he leaves earlier models behind.