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Reception, gifts, and desire in Augustines’s Confessions and Vergil’s Aeneid

Wentzel, Rocki Tong

Abstract Details

2008, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Classics.
My dissertation is a thematic exploration of themes of reception in Vergil’s Aeneid and how those themes are received by Augustine in his Confessions. I begin with the problem of reception in the Aeneid, a world which lacks a clear and consistent gauge to assess action and desire. Reception is explicated through an examination of gifts, which is exemplary of giving and reception in general. A study of gifts is also useful in illuminating the desire that guides reception. Reception is examined on three levels: reception within the Aeneid itself, Augustine’s reception of the Aeneid, and reception within the Confessions. The project resembles Augustine’s conversion process, in that it moves from the objects of desire in the phenomenal world, such as empire and body to the all-encompassing desire of the Christian faith for a unified and omnipotent God. The gifts from God, which are instruments of Augustine’s conversion, include rhetoric, exempla, and Continentia. By accepting and using these gifts, as God intends them, Augustine is making a proper return on them. The composition of his Confessions is one such return, in that it is a gift to his audience, in which he offers himself as an exemplum in return for the exempla that shaped his conversion narrative and experience. Augustine’s narrative of this conversion transforms and appropriates the language and themes of erotic desire as represented by the Aeneid, so that his conversion narrative effects a conversion of the Aeneid itself. Augustine offers a solution to the problems of desire in the Aeneid by defining all problems and issues of reception in terms of a good and merciful creator.
William Batstone (Advisor)
209 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wentzel, R. T. (2008). Reception, gifts, and desire in Augustines’s Confessions and Vergil’s Aeneid [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1198858389

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wentzel, Rocki. Reception, gifts, and desire in Augustines’s Confessions and Vergil’s Aeneid. 2008. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1198858389.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wentzel, Rocki. "Reception, gifts, and desire in Augustines’s Confessions and Vergil’s Aeneid." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1198858389

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)