Description
Book SynopsisJames Boyd White invites readers to join him in a close and engaged encounter with St. Augustine’s
Confessions. He offers an accessible guide to reading the text in Latin—even for those who have never studied the language—guiding readers to experience the immediacy, urgency, and vitality of Augustine’s writing.
Trade ReviewI've spent fifty years translating Sanskrit texts, but only now has this book taught me how to read a text in a foreign language and how to read (and write) a translation. It is also a brilliant book about Latin, Augustine, God, and the meaning of life. -- Wendy Doniger, author of
The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in MythSuch careful, loving reading as we find in James Boyd White's book is as rare as it is precious. This is a book to be read slowly, allowing Augustine's Latin to resonate—to be felt even when little understood. For words are living things, and we here come to know that Augustine's
Confessions is a work that is alive in words with all their human complexity— but above all with love. -- David Jasper, author of
Heaven in Ordinary: Religion and Poetry in a Secular AgeLet in the Light offers a better way to read a work of literature of enormous and enduring importance. White argues that our easy familiarity with the English language and the inevitable distance and distortions associated with any translation create a barrier between Augustine and his readers. He is a lively, clear, and engaging writer, and the book is extremely sophisticated about literary criticism but wears its sophistication lightly. -- M. Cathleen Kaveny, author of
Ethics at the Edges of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal ThoughtThe book is a gift to anyone who loves the
Confessions already, or indeed to anyone who wonders why the book has such standing in the theological and literary tradition. * Religious Studies Review *
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
An Outline of Augustine’s Life up to the Composition of the
ConfessionsPart I1. The Shape of the
Confessions2. The First Three Sentences (Book 1)
3. The Movement from One Mode of Thought to Another (Book 1)
4. Remembering Early Childhood and Language Breaking Down (Book 1)
Part II5. Adolescence, Sex, and the Stolen Pears (Book 2)
6. Love, Philosophy, and Monnica’s Dream (Book 3)
7. Friendship and Struggles with Manicheism (book 4)
8. From the Manichees to Ambrose (Book 5)
9. Certainty and Uncertainty (Book 6)
10. Imagining God and the Origin of Evil (Book 7)
11. The Conversion in the Garden (Book 8)
12. What It Meant (Book 9)
Part III13. Memory, Sin, and Redemption (Book 10)
14. Time (Book 11)
15. Reading
Genesis: The Creation Story (Book 12)
16. “Knock and It Shall Be Opened unto You” (Book 13)
Coda
Notes
Index
