Seducing Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions

Virginia Burrus; Mark D. Jordan; Karmen MacKendrick

Published by Fordham University Press 2010

Seducing Augustine

Bodies, Desires, Confessions

Virginia Burrus , Mark D. Jordan and Karmen MacKendrick

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823292578

Overview
Contents

About this book

Augustine’s Confessions is a text that seduces. But how often do its readers respond in kind? Here three scholars who share a longstanding fascination with sexuality and Christian discourse attempt to do just that. Where prior interpreters have been inclined either to defend or to criticize Augustine’s views, Virginia Burrus, Mark Jordan, and Karmen MacKendrick set out both to seduce and to be seduced by his text. Often ambivalent but always passionately engaged, their readings of the Confessions center on four sets of intertwined themes—secrecy and confession, asceticism and eroticism, constraint and freedom, and time and eternity. Rather than expose Augustine’s sexual history, they explore how the Confessions conjoins the erotic with the hidden, the imaginary, and the fictional. Rather than bemoan the repressiveness of his text, they uncover the complex relationship between seductive flesh and persuasive words that pervades all of its books. Rather than struggle to escape the control of the author, they embrace the painful pleasure of willed submission that lies at the erotic heart not only of the Confessions but also of Augustine’s broader understanding of sin and salvation. Rather than mourn the fateful otherworldliness of his theological vision, they plumb the bottomless depths of beauty that Augustine discovers within creation, thereby extending desire precisely by refusing satisfaction. In unfolding their readings, the authors draw upon other works in Augustine’s corpus while building on prior Augustinian scholarship in their own overlapping fields of history, theology, and philosophy. They also press well beyond the conventional boundaries of scholarly disciplines, conversing with such wide-ranging theorists of eroticism as Barthes, Baudrillard, Klossowski, Foucault, and Harpham. In the end, they offer not only a fresh interpretation of Augustine’s famous work but also a multivocal literary-philosophical meditation on the seductive elusiveness of desire, bodies, language, and God.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Pleasurable Temptations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Secrets and Lies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2. The Word, His Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
3. Freedom in Submission Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
4. No Time for Sex Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Conclusion: Seductive Praises Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 176

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9780823292578