Autobiography/autofictionality, the constitution of time and historical consciousness in Augustine: The unity of 'Confessions' with regard to the vision of Ostia.

自传/自小说性，奥古斯丁的时间和历史意识的构成：关于奥斯蒂亚愿景的“忏悔录”的统一。

• 批准号: 407958509
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Friedemann Drews
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Seminar für Klassische Philologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/407958509?language=en
• 关键词: Autobiography; autofictionality; constitution; time; historical

In literary criticism, the concept of autofictionality (in the sense of fictionalized truth made up by a narrator) is currently debated, e.g. as regards Ovid's Amores: Whereas in this work a distinction of discourse between factuality and fictionality can be found, this is not the case in Augustine's Confessions as I want to show in the monograph to be written. Although the most famous work by the church father cannot be considered as a mere report of historical facts, it is neither the product of pure imagination nor can it be called autofictional. Instead the objective of Conf. is self-knowledge (in the face of the Christian god Augustine believes in). This cognitive process consists in the reflection of such experiences that are of essential relevance to the life of the individual soul remembering and reflecting her/his past: This relevance, on the one hand, goes back to the 'events as such', insofar as they might have a historical core, on the other hand to the inner content a certain event has for the experiencing and remembering 'I', which cannot be factually observed, but has to be intellectually and emotionally comprehended. In order to be understood by the reader, this mental process of personal experience and self-interpretation has itself to become the subject-matter of the text without being 'fictitious'. In Conf., therefore, the narrator Augustine shows autobiographical interests strictly confined to self-knowledge and to his individual historical consciousness. The latter is immediately connected with Augustine's theory of time. In the light of the many studies devoted to this topic, it is to be shown why Augustine is neither a proponent of a merely physical nor of a merely subjectivistic understanding of time: According to Conf. 11, physical changes are constituted as actual time only by the cognitive activity of soul since it is soul that comprehends the relations of cause and effect as well as of 'earlier' and 'later'. Soul establishes the actual connection of past, present and future events and thus constitutes "the threefold presence" of past, present and future within the soul's act of cognition (for example, by grasping a melody in its completeness). 'Actual time', therefore, does not have to be the same for any soul/human being. However, the church father is not introducing the postmodern notion of 'alternative facts' (avant la lettre) here; for, according to his theory, there is the possibility to account for why something was (or is) experienced and comprehended by someone as such, in this way and not differently. There exists, therefore, a criterion why arbitrary contentions cannot hold truth-claims – also in distinction to fictional narratives that, as products of pure imagination, cannot, or do not have to, be accounted for in terms of having a clear truth-value. By discussing these questions and with regard to the vision of Ostia (Conf. 9), a new approach can be made to prove the inner unity of Conf..

在文学批评中，“自我虚构”（autofictionality）的概念（即由叙述者虚构的虚构事实）目前存在争议，例如奥维德的《爱情》：除了在这部作品中可以发现事实性和虚构性之间的话语区别之外，这是不存在的。正如我想在即将撰写的专着中展示的奥古斯丁《忏悔录》中的情况，虽然这位教父最著名的著作不能被视为纯粹的历史事实报告，但它既不是纯粹想象的产物，也不是纯粹想象的产物。相反，Conf的目标是自我认识（面对奥古斯丁所信仰的基督教神）。灵魂记住并反映她/他的过去：这种相关性一方面可以追溯到“事件本身”，因为它们可能具有历史核心，另一方面又可以追溯到某个事件对于该事件的内在内容。体验并记住“我”，无法被事实观察到，但必须在智力和情感上被理解，为了被读者理解，这种个人经历和自我解释的心理过程本身必须成为文本的主题，而不是“虚构的”。因此，在《Conf》中，叙述者奥古斯丁表现出的自传兴趣严格限于自我认识和他个人的历史意识，根据许多致力于这一主题的研究，后者与奥古斯丁的时间理论直接相关。成为表明了为什么奥古斯丁既不是单纯物理时间理解的支持者，也不是纯粹主观主义时间理解的支持者：根据Conf 11，物理变化仅由灵魂的认知活动构成实际时间，因为灵魂理解因果关系。灵魂建立了过去、现在和未来事件的实际联系，从而在灵魂的认知行为中构成了过去、现在和未来的“三重存在”（例如，因此，对于任何灵魂/人类来说，“实际时间”不一定是相同的。然而，根据他的理论，教父在这里并没有引入“另类事实”（avant la letter）的后现代概念。 ，有可能以这种方式而不是不同的方式解释为什么某件事被（或正在）被某人经历和理解，因此，存在一个标准，说明为什么任意争论不能成立。真实主张——也与虚构的叙述不同，虚构的叙述作为纯粹想象的产物，不能或不必通过讨论这些问题和关于愿景来解释。 Ostia (Conf. 9)，可以采用一种新的方法来证明 Conf. 的内在统一性。