Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Reading and Self-Knowledge
2. Ethical Values and the Literary Imagination
3. Later Ancient Literary Realism
4. The Problem of Self-Representation
5. Petrarch's Portrait of Augustine
6. Two Version of Utopia
7. Lectio Spiritualis
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

The essays in this volume discuss the changing purpose of reading from late antiquity to the Renaissance. "A most unusual, fascinating, and rich book, very well written, with copious scholarly notes."—Choice

About the Author

Brian Stock is Professor of History and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto. He is author of The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries; Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation; and Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Reviews

"This book is an instructive and comprehensive work about Augustine's influence on history as well as on the nature of reading and the discovery of the Self through literary texts."--L&C/Book Reviews "This recent volume by Professor Brian Stock exhibits enormous learning in its efforts to uncover the patterns of relations between reading, writing, and the search for self-understanding during the Middle Ages."--Catholic Historical Review "The essays in this volume discuss the changing purpose of reading from late antiquity to the Renaissance. "A most unusual, fascinating, and rich book, very well written, with copious scholarly notes."--Choice