From Pulitzer Prize-winner Garry Wills, the story of Augustine's Confessions
In this brief and incisive book, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills tells the story of the Confessions--what motivated Augustine to dictate it, how it asks to be read, and the many ways it has been misread in the one-and-a-half millennia since it was composed. Following Wills's biography of Augustine and his translation of the Confessions, this is an unparalleled introduction to one of the most important books in the Christian and Western traditions.
Understandably fascinated by the story of Augustine's life, modern readers have largely succumbed to the temptation to read the Confessions as autobiography. But, Wills argues, this is a mistake. The book is not autobiography but rather a long prayer, suffused with the language of Scripture and addressed to God, not man. Augustine tells the story of his life not for its own significance but in order to discern how, as a drama of sin and salvation leading to God, it fits into sacred history. "We have to read Augustine as we do Dante," Wills writes, "alert to rich layer upon layer of Scriptural and theological symbolism." Wills also addresses the long afterlife of the book, from controversy in its own time and relative neglect during the Middle Ages to a renewed prominence beginning in the fourteenth century and persisting to today, when the Confessions has become an object of interest not just for Christians but also historians, philosophers, psychiatrists, and literary critics.
With unmatched clarity and skill, Wills strips away the centuries of misunderstanding that have accumulated around Augustine's spiritual classic.
Industry Reviews
"The single most important thing for Wills, the thing he'd most like you to accept, is that Confessions is not autobiography. For Wills, this misreading of Augustine's best-known work has given us any number of interpretations (Freudian, sociological, historical) that obscure the point. And that point is? According to Wills, Confessions exist as a kind of 'training ground' or preparation for a reading of the Bible. He shows us how Augustine uses incidents from his life (some actual, some allegorical, some difficult to place on either side of the ledger) to turn the reader's mind toward holy writ, specifically Genesis. In other words, to prepare us to see/read/feel God's presence as it is revealed in Genesis. . . . His arguments make for vivid reading."---Andre Alexis, Globe and Mail
