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，自虚构性（autofictionality）的概念（在叙述者虚构的真理的意义上）目前正在争论中，例如关于奥维德的《爱情》：尽管在这部作品中可以找到真实性和虚构性之间的话语区别，但正如我想在即将撰写的专著中所展示的那样，奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》中的情况并非如此。虽然最著名的工作，由教会的父亲不能被认为是一个单纯的报告的历史事实，它既不是产品的纯粹想象，也不能被称为autoficial。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）。这种认知过程包括对这些经验的反思，这些经验与个体灵魂的生活至关重要，记住并反思她/他的过去：这种相关性一方面可以追溯到“事件本身”，因为它们可能有一个历史核心，另一方面可以追溯到某个事件对于经验和记忆“我”的内在内容，这是不能被事实观察到的，但必须在智力和情感上被理解。为了被读者理解，这种个人经验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”。在会议上，因此，叙述者奥古斯丁表现出严格局限于自我认识和个人历史意识的自传性兴趣。 后者是直接与奥古斯丁的时间理论。在许多研究致力于这个主题的光，这是要表明为什么奥古斯丁既不是一个纯粹的物理，也不是一个纯粹的主观主义的时间理解的支持者：根据Conf.11，物理变化构成的实际时间只有由灵魂的认知活动，因为它是灵魂，hackends的关系，原因和效果，以及'早'和'晚'。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，通过完整地把握旋律）。因此，对于任何灵魂/人类来说，“实际时间”不必相同。然而，这位教父并不是在这里引入“替代事实”（avant la lettre）的后现代概念;因为，根据他的理论，有可能解释为什么某些东西被某人以这种方式而不是以不同的方式体验和理解。因此，存在着一个标准，说明任意的争论为什么不能坚持真理主张--这也与虚构的叙述不同，虚构的叙述作为纯粹想象的产物，不能或不必根据具有明确的真理价值来解释。 通过讨论这些问题并结合奥斯蒂亚的愿景（Conf.9），可以采取一种新的方法来证明Conf.9的内在统一性。