1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790146603321

Autore

Pranger M. B

Titolo

Eternity's ennui [[electronic resource] ] : temporality, perseverance and voice in Augustine and Western literature / / by M.B. Pranger

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Leiden ; ; Boston, : Brill, 2010

ISBN

1-283-85211-X

90-04-18937-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (432 p.)

Collana

Brill's studies in intellectual history, , 0920-8607 ; ; v. 190

Disciplina

248.32

270.2092

Soggetti

Time - Religious aspects - Christianity

Time in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [411]-418) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Preliminary Material -- Introduction: Rambling -- Chapter One. Time, Focus and Narrative in Augustine’s Confessions -- Chapter Two. The Unfathomability of Sincerity: on the Seriousness of Augustine’s Confessions -- Chapter Three. The Gift of Destiny and the Language of Dispossession -- Chapter Four. The Sustainability of Voice -- Chapter Five. Eternity’s Ennui -- Bibliography -- Index of Personal Names.

Sommario/riassunto

Augustine articulates temporality as focus rather than duration. It encompasses the shift from the future through the present to the past. Yet this a-causal, free-floating concept of time has never been applied to the shape of Augustine’s own narrative in the Confessions , or to that other vintage Augustinian problem: predestination. This book examines Augustinian temporality by experimentally projecting it onto modern(ist) authors (Kleist, Henry James, Kafka, Beckett) who are less dependent on sequential narrative and more concerned with the fragility and sustainability of voice in time. Processed through this mill of unfamiliar readings, the poignant problem of Augustinian time is how focus can account for digression. How can one deal with an unfathomably brief notion of time while eternity’s longueur hovers over it?