Among its many literary, philosophical and theoretical innovations, Augustine's Confessions
has become famous for including the very first biography of a woman:
the life of his mother Monica. While Augustine's relations to women as
well as his representations of women have been amply scrutinized in
recent scholarship, Monica's function in the Confessions remains to be explored. This paper suggests that in Monica's biography Augustine offers a Bildungsroman,
sketching the progress of his mother from an ambitiously overwhelming
parent into an ascetic philosopher. Monica's is a „parallel life" in the
Confessions: instead of a detached registration of the many
conversions of his son, she becomes actively engaged in the
life-changing transformations promoted by the ascetic revolution. I wish
to argue that Monica will be the most perfect, most spiritual product
of Augustine's ascetic turn: she will rise to the height of
contemplation thanks to her utter estrangement from the world and to her
strict rejection of the concerns of the flesh.
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