Seminar: Augustine and Virgil

Catalog description

This is a seminar in reception: we read widely in the Confessions in English and in Latin, studying specific moments in each book in which Augustine would seem to allude or quote from the works of Virgil, especially the Aeneid. The goal is to recapture modes of reading put in place by Christians engaging with pagan antiquity, focusing on the ethical turn in reading. Students will attend the 2026 meeting of the International Society for Late Antique Literary Studies, to be held at Brown in October. The seminar will culminate in a substantive research paper.