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At its most basic, an autobiography is the story of a person's life, written by that person. It is sometimes said that Augustine invented the modern autobiography.Augustine did not simply establish a pattern; he produced a work whose influencewas so pervasive that all later autobiographers were affected by it, either positivelyor negatively. (The most famous example of a reaction against Augustine'sConfessions appears in the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the FrenchRomantic writer and philosopher.) However, Augustine's Confessions was certainlynot the first work of autobiography in Western literature. Numerous Classicalauthors had produced stories of their own lives, and Augustine also had specificallyChristian examples to draw on, such as the passion narratives of martyred saintslike Perpetua.However, Augustine's autobiography is unique in several ways. The Confessions isnot a straightforward account of the events of Augustine's life. In fact, Augustinefrequently leaves out events that readers may consider important. The death of hisfather, for example, is mentioned only in passing, and large portions of his life aresimply glossed over. On the other hand, Augustine gives special emphasis toseemingly small events, such as the theft of pears. In telling the story of his life,Augustine selects only those events that illustrate his spiritual development;everything else is pushed into the background. In focusing so tightly on his spirituallife, Augustine also trains his acute powers of observation on his own psychology.The intensely personal nature of Augustine's self-portrait is one of the aspects that have made it so appealing over the centuries. In the Confessions, Augustine is a fullyrounded person: candid, acerbic, passionate, ambitious, restlessly intellectual,devoted to his friends, subject to flaws of pride and excess. Augustine's voice isuniquely identifiable, and it gives readers a genuine feel for his personality andcharacter. Readers see Augustine not only from the outside, but from the inside.By its nature, autobiography is a tricky genre. Because autobiography has anelement of history, readers expect some measure of historical accuracy from theauthor. But because autobiography is also a form of literature, it shares some of theelements of fiction: a story arc, specific events that move the story, and details of style and narrative that affect your interpretation. Readers, therefore, may wonderhow much of an autobiography is true. This question does not necessarily implydeliberate deception on the part of the author; human memory is naturally selective,and your perceptions of your own life are shaped by your experiences. Throughout the Confessions, readers are constantly confronted with two Augustines: the youngAugustine struggling along his spiritual path, and the older Augustine, the narrator,who looks back over this path and finds that it had a direction he was unable torecognize at the time.By being selective about the events he chooses in order to illustrate his life,Augustine is giving a deliberate shape to his narrative, a shape that the messy eventsof life generally do not possess. As an author, he is aware of the tricks that memorycan play; he devotes much attention to examining how memory works.
 
Furthermore, Augustine gives his story a distinct arc, as event builds upon event inAugustine's spiritual struggle. Augustine also uses clear literary echoes to lendmeaning to his story. He repeatedly compares himself to the Prodigal Son, thewandering sinner returning home, and when he abandons Monica at Carthage, hisstory parallels that of another famous wanderer, Aeneas. The scholar PierreCourcelle, examining the Confessions, identified literary parallels for almost everypart of Augustine's story. But does that mean the story is fictional?In one sense, to ask whether the Confessions are empirically true is to ask the wrongquestion. You have only the story as Augustine tells it, and ultimately, you must judge it on its own merits. The game of "hunt the author" can quickly become anexercise in absurdity. Scholars have spent considerable time and energy, forexample, debating what exactly happened to Augustine in his garden at Milan: What could a child from that period of history have said, in the course of a game or aconversation, that Augustine would have misheard or interpreted as "Take andread"? Such questions may be entertaining, but they do not shed much light on themeaning of the Confessions, either for Augustine as writer or for his readers. AsAugustine's own interpretations of Christian scripture demonstrate, he was alwayslooking for the meanings hidden under the surface of a text, and he believed that even seemingly simple texts could support multiple interpretations. For Augustine,historical truth and symbolic significance were not mutually exclusive. If you viewthe Confessions as both autobiography and literary artwork, you can open up yourunderstanding of it in ways that the Confessions itself invites.

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