eprintid: 24732
rev_number: 15
eprint_status: archive
userid: 2382
dir: disk0/00/02/47/32
datestamp: 2018-06-22 13:16:09
lastmod: 2019-02-21 13:38:59
status_changed: 2018-06-22 13:16:09
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Grethlein, Jonas
title: Lucian's response to Augustine: conversion and narrative in Confessions and Nigrinus
subjects: ddc-480
divisions: i-70900
abstract: In the case of the extraordinary experience of a conversion, the shortcomings of a
verbal rendering are felt with particular force. Augustine’s account of his conversion
in Confessions 8, however, not only ignores the gap between experience and narrative,
but entwines them in a way that seems to erase the boundary between Life and
life. In Nigrinus, Lucian trenchantly satirises the kind of chain between conversion
and its representation envisaged by Augustine. At the same time, a comparison with
the much later reception of the Confessions in Petrarch throws into relief the common
ground which Lucian and Augustine share. Taken together, the Confessions and the
Nigrinus give us a glimpse of what may have been a rich tradition of protreptic conversion
literature in the Hellenistic and Imperial Eras.
date: 2016-06-01
publisher: Mohr Siebeck
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00024732
fp7_project_id: AncNar 312321
ppn_swb: 1653347090
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-247329
language: eng
bibsort: GRETHLEINJLUCIANSRES20160601
full_text_status: public
publication: Religion in the Roman Empire
number: 2/2
pagerange: 256-278
citation:   Grethlein, Jonas  (2016) Lucian's response to Augustine: conversion and narrative in Confessions and Nigrinus.  Religion in the Roman Empire (2/2).  pp. 256-278.      
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/24732/2/RRE_vol2_no2_256-278.pdf