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LATENT NARRATIVE PATTERNS, ALLEGORICAL CHOICES, AND LITERARY UNITY IN AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS1 BY DANUTA SHANZER Every writer creates himself in his autobiography. He may falsify the record 'by creating a character who never existed. He may merely con- form to a stock set of rules that govern the structure of the average human life, allowing himself to use birth, marriage, reproduction, and death as the dividers of an orderly existence. He may use a series of con- ventional aetates to divide his life and step forth as babe, child, youth, young, mature and aging man, and finally slippered pantaloon. Or he may do something more innovative, and depict himself as someone else. As we shall see, Augustine did the latter in the Confessions. True, some of the common autobiographical boundaries are drawn-Augustine knows that he is not an infant because he can speak (C. 1.8.13), he alludes to his past iuventus (C. 6. 1. I )-but many biographical conven- tions are cheerfully flouted. A.'s mother and father acquire names only at the end of Book 9, where indeed much material is to be found that would have adorned the opening of a more linear and conventional work.3 And the
Vigiliae Christianae – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1992
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