Abstract

This dissertation interprets St. Augustine's Confessions by using a Ricoeurian method of analysis. The focus of interpretation is the self textualized in the Confessions. Following Ricoeur's method of reading "in front of the text," this dissertation interprets Augustine's text in the text's self-presentation qualities and delineates the textuality of grace inhering in the complex literary environment of the Confessions . The undercurrent of performing an analysis of the textuality of grace is to discern elucidating insights on selfhood disclosed by the Confessions. ;The introduction gives a brief presentation of the textures of the Confessions that will mark the beginnings of this dissertation. The second part discusses Paul Ricoeur's anthropological methodology and theory of the textuality of the text. His analysis will provide a proper hermeneutical parlance of the selfhood for accomplishing the goal of this dissertation. The third part of the introduction defines a Ricoeurian method of tracing the textuality of grace in the Confessions. ;Chapter 1 shapes the Confessions as a confessional narrative. The goal of this chapter is to lay out the intertextual dynamics that the textual event of confessio produces with reference to Augustine's self-understanding and from the vantage point of delineating the textuality of grace manifested in the Confessions. Chapter 2 demonstrates how the textualized self of the Confessions is structured by the dynamics that occur in the process of offering a textual prayer, confession, and narration. Chapter 3 shows that the process of forging a sense of identity through narration ultimately moves to presenting the narrated life as a prefiguring text through which others may configure and refigure their own lives. This study concludes with a summary of the insights gathered from performing a Ricoeurian analysis of the Confessions