Augustine, Confessions

We will focus on the Christian humanism of Augustine’s Confessions, reading excerpts from the autobiographical books against the diction found in them owed to Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Sallust, and Virgil. The question of why a Christian might make use of such diction will be answered through attention to Augustine's training and his literary aims in writing the Confessions.