Augustine: The Confessions

by Gillian Clark

When Augustine wrote his Confessions in the last years of the fourth century, he was just over forty and had abandoned a successful career for a life of prayer and study. He interpreted his past life as a search for God, in which understanding and commitment had been frustrated by wrong education, mistaken ambition, sexual desire and sinful nature. Some readers are inspired by his brilliance and devotion, others think he misread his own past. This book discusses the transformation of Augustine's own life and of the late Roman world, the structure, style and purpose of the Confessions, and the problems of rhetoric and truth posed by Augustine's account of himself. It concludes with a brief overview of the influence of this landmark text in the history of European culture.

122 pages, Hardcover

Published September 24, 1993

About the author

Gillian Clark is a Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol.

Professor Clark’s research field is the relationship of inherited classical culture and late antique Christianity. She works especially on Augustine and on the late Platonist philosophers Porphyry and Iamblichus, and also has a longstanding interest in women’s history and the history of gender. She directs an international collaborative and interdisciplinary project, funded for its first five years by the AHRC, for a commentary on Augustine City of God (De Civitate Dei) to be published in print and electronic versions. Professor Clark is co-editor, with Professor Andrew Louth (Durham), of the monograph series Oxford Early Christian Studies and Oxford Early Christian Texts (OUP). She is also a co-editor of Translated Texts for Historians 300-800 (Liverpool UP) and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Roman Studies. She is Chair of Directors for the Oxford Patristic Conference 2011.