Language in the Confessions of Augustine / Philip Burton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Burton, Philip (Philip Hugh)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430. Confessiones.

Augustine.

Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430--Language.

Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430.

Physical Description:

198 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Augustine's Confessions tells the story of the author's encounters with language; from his acquisition of language as a child, through his career as schoolboy orator, star student at Carthage, professor of rhetoric at Carthage and Rome. Having worked his way up to the eminence of Court Orator to the Roman Emperor at Milan, Augustine rediscovered the Catholic Christianity of his childhood-and decided that this was incompatible with his rhetorical profession. Over the next ten years, he gradually reinvents himself as a different sort of language professional: a Christian intellectual, commentating on Scripture and preaching to his flock.

Philip Burton explores some aspects of this encounter, investigating both Augustine's attitude towards language and his actual linguistic practice. Starting with a consideration of the importance of sermo-language, style, dialectic, divine Logos-in classical and Christian thought, Burton addresses Augustine's employment of comic and popular-culture literary genres, his use of Greek, his attitude towards books and reading, his use of biblical idioms, and his treatment of the paralinguistic (laughing, singing, weeping, and groaning).

Contents:

Sermo

Alternative comedy : the language of the theatre

The vocabulary of the liberal arts

Talking books

Biblical idioms in the Confessions

The paralinguistic.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [179]-187) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780199266227

0199266220

OCLC:

82470641