LATN 361-001 / CATH 361-001: Augustine Confessions Spring Semester 2012 Monday - Wednesday - Friday, 2:45pm-3:35pm Crown Center 572 Dr. Jacqueline Long

• Required: Augustine, Confessions, Books I-IV, ed. Gillian Clark (Cambridge UP 1995)
  • We may also make use of Augustine, Confessions: an electronic edition, ed. James J. O'Donnell, SGML encoding and HTML conversion by Anne Mahoney (on-line reprint of Oxford text and commentary 1992; for the Stoa Consortium 1999)
• Required: Gillian Clark, Augustine: the Confessions (Bristol Phoenix Press 2005)
• Required: a translation of Augustine, Confessions:
  • Henry Chadwick's (Oxford World's Classics 1991 and rpt.) is most scholars' preferred translation
  • R. S. Pine-Coffin's (Penguin Classics, 1961 and rpt.) is also excellent
  • Albert C. Outler's (Library of Christian Classics 1955) is on-line: either download .pdf or go to text online - click "read online" and follow links to individual books; respectively, these copies are provded by Augustine's website and Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• Recommended: J. H. Allen et al., Allen & Greenough's New Latin Grammar (Dover Books 2006); e-text available through the Perseus Digital Library

Provisional Order of Proceeding

• Latin reading assignments will be determined by the class's progress. We will aim to build strong reading skills that will underpin critical inquiry into the concerns of the text, the author, and his world.
• Short quizzes check in on nuts and bolts of the Latin.
• Prepared exercises in "literary translation" give scope to develop ideas about what the Latin is saying, how, and why it matters; they are due in hand, word-processed and successfully printed, at the start of the class period, on the days for which they are assigned.
• We will read the whole Confessions in translation, in order to understand the parts of the text we will read in Latin in their relationship to the entire work.
• Supplementary reading in Clark's introduction to the Confessions introduces historical and critical context for the study of this book: read thoughtfully in preparation for general discussion, and consider how it relates to Augustine's account of himself -and everything else that he is accounting for- within the Confessions.
• Article-reports will be assigned to members of the seminar in turn, so that they may critically examine published scholarship relating to Augustine and the Confessions and lead thoughtful seminar discussion taking the inquiry further.
• Members of the seminar will develop research projects investigating selected aspects of the Confessions in light of their own critical examination of the text and scholarly investigations. Reports on work-in-progress will be presented to the seminar in the second half of the semester.
• Dates to watch out for:

Revised 16 January 2012 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/