Augustine beyond the Book (original) (raw)
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Reviews in Religion and Theology 21/4 (2014): 454-62
This review article explores a new indispensable reference work on the reception of Augustine. It offers an overview of its content, structure, and methodology, as well as a critical assessment of its overall contribution to the study of Augustine. Goethe once remarked that, in the world, there are just a few voices, yet so many echoes. Augustine is definitely among the ‘few voices’, which have provoked all manner of friendly and unfriendly echoes. It is particularly important to realize that, apart from explicit citations and references in western literature, Augustine has also profoundly shaped medieval and modern culture through the subtle dissemination of his ideas into various spheres of life. This reference work not only provides a description of the current state of the reception of Augustine, but also adds the new results of the diligent work of the contributing researchers and identifies several topics that still need to be investigated.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2011
A significant motive for the recent interest in Augustine's early writings appears to be the belief that those books are the product of a youthful and optimistic philosophical seeker, more open than the old bishop whose polemical writings taught Westerners to be pessimistic about their agency and sexuality. Brian Stock's recent investigation of the relationship between Augustine's thinking about the self and his use of the soliloquy both undermines and remains indebted to that common perspective.
Scrinium Augustini. The World of Augustine’s Letters (preview only)
Multi-dimensional and methodologically diverse study of St. Augustine's correspondence This volume contains the proceedings of the international symposium on Augustine’s correspondence held at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland) on 25-26 June 2015, which was a part of a wider project dedicated to the study of Augustine’s correspondence. Another part of the project is a fully searchable on-line catalogue of issues present in the Letters (www.scrinium.umk.pl). The papers presented in the book access the large corpus of Augustine’s epistles from various academic perspectives (theological, philosophical, historical, literary and rhetorical). First, the present study is thematically more wide-ranging than any of those that had been previously published on this subject; second, it is interdisciplinary in its focus and methodology; third, it provides new, substantial insights into selected problems of Augustine’s work; fourth, it approaches the Letters from two complementary, methodological perspectives: the first part of the book contains papers which study widely defined problem in the light of the whole corpus, while those in the second part deal with specific problems found in particular letters. The result is a significant contribution to our understanding of the complex and fascinating Augustinian world, seen through the lens of his letters, made by authors whose academic experience and scholarly achievements guarantee its quality.