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Author Stock, Brian

Title Augustine the reader : meditation, self-knowledge, and the ethics of interpretation / Brian Stock
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1996

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Description 1 online resource (x, 463 pages)
Contents I. Confessions 1-9. 1. Learning to Read. Words. Reading and Writing. Self-Improvement. 2. Intellectual Horizons. Manichaeism. Ambrose. Neoplatonism. 3. Reading and Conversion. Alypius. Simplicianus. Ponticianus. Augustine. 4. From Cassiciacum to Ostia. Cassiciacum. Ostia -- II. The Ethics of Interpretation. 5. Beginnings. The Letters. The Dialogues. 6. Speaking and Reading. On Dialectic. The Teacher. Defining the Reader. 7. Toward Theory. Tradition and Beliefs. The "Uninstructed" Christian Doctrine. 8. Memory, Self-Reform and Time. Remembering. Conduct. Time. 9. The Self. A Language of Thought. The Reader and Cogito. The Road toward Wisdom
Summary Stock displays an enviable and intimate knowledge of the text of Augustine, above all of his Confessions and, as the book progresses, of the De Trinitate
Augustine of Hippo, a central figure in the history of Western thought, is also the author of a theory of reading that has had a profound influence on Western letters from the ages of Petrarch, Montaigne, Luther, and Rousseau to those of Freud and our own time. Brian Stock provides the first full account of this theory within the evolution of Augustine's early dialogues, his Confessions, and his systematic treatises. Augustine was convinced that words and images play a mediating role in our perceptions of reality. In the union of philosophy, psychology, and literary insights that forms the basis of his theory of reading, the reader emerges as the dominant model of the reflective self. Meditative reading, indeed the meditative act that constitutes reading itself, becomes the portal to inner being. At the same time, Augustine argues that the self-knowledge reading brings is, of necessity, limited, since it is faith rather than interpretive reason that can translate reading into forms of understanding. In making his theory of reading a central concern, Augustine rethinks ancient doctrines about images, memory, emotion, and cognition. In judging what readers gain and do not gain from the sensory and mental understanding of texts, he takes up questions that have reappeared in contemporary thinking. He prefigures, and in a way he teaches us to recognize, our own preoccupations with the phenomenology of reading, the hermeneutics of tradition, and the ethics of interpretation
Analysis Augustine Saint, Bishop of Hippo Books and reading
Augustine Saint, Bishop of Hippo Confessiones
Augustine Saint, Bishop of Hippo Influence
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo Books and reading
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo Confessiones
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo Influence
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo Knowledge and learning
Books and reading
Books and reading History
Self-knowledge, Theory of History
Spirituality History
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 419-453) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject 880-01 Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430. Confessiones.
SUBJECT 880-01/(S Augustin, saint, γ̐ưevγ̐ưeque d'Hippone -- Influence
Subject Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430 -- Books and reading
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430 -- Influence
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430 -- Knowledge and learning
SUBJECT Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430 fast
Confessiones (Augustine, of Hippo, Saint) fast
Subject 880-02 Self-knowledge, Theory of -- History
880-02/(S Spiritualitγ̐ưe -- Histoire
Books and reading -- History
Books and reading.
Spirituality -- History.
RELIGION -- Christian Church -- History.
RELIGION -- Christianity -- History.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Ancient & Classical.
Spirituality
Books and reading
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Learning and scholarship
Self-knowledge, Theory of
Hermeneutiek.
Lezen.
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780674044043
0674044045
0674052773
9780674052772