Practice question · True or false
The Confessions is addressed to its readers, who are asked to judge Augustine’s account of his life.
Hints
- Look at the grammatical person of the whole work.
- The addressee is one who already knows everything being confessed.
Show the answer
False
Why
False. The whole work is addressed in the second person to God. That is what makes the unsparing self-description possible: an addressee already in possession of the facts cannot be flattered or deceived, so the confession has nothing to gain by managing its image. We read as overhearers.
Practise Augustine’s Confessions: the Invention of Interiority
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More questions on Augustine’s Confessions: the Invention of Interiority
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