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The Catholic Historical Review 89.1 (2003) 87-88



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After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text. By Brian Stock. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2001. Pp. viii, 132. $32.00.)

Despite its diminutive size, this recent volume by Professor Brian Stock exhibits enormous learning in its efforts to uncover the patterns of relations between reading, writing, and the search for self-understanding during the Middle Ages. As the title suggests, the book presents a number of studies of what medieval readers made of Augustine's presentation of reading and writing as ways of achieving self-understanding. Though, as Stock points out, medieval authors may have gone considerably beyond Augustine in their hermeneutics and the extent to which they perceived literary activities as ends in themselves, their indebtedness to the Bishop of Hippo's ideas is always the starting point for understanding their contributions.

In the first chapter, Stock outlines Augustine's own ideas and practices regarding reading and writing in search of self-knowledge. What is distinctive about Augustine and what sets him apart from many of his late ancient contemporaries and near-contemporaries is his conviction that we can come to understand ourselves best through the narratives, always incomplete, of our own lives and the lives of others. To be sure, this orientation toward narrative was derived from the practice of reading and reflecting upon biblical narratives, but Augustine's incorporation of the narrative approach within the Neoplatonic theme of rising from the sensible realm to the supersensible realm inspired many of the approaches to reading and writing throughout the Middle Ages.

In the second, third, and fourth chapters, Stock makes a number of acute observations regarding the different forms and approaches found within medieval literature. In these chapters, he traces out why ancient philosophical dialogues and treatises gave way, in the course of the Middle Ages, to literature as the preferred vehicle for exploring ethical positions and counterpositions. The main cause for the shift in both literary form and the mode of questioning is to be found in the influence of Augustine's Confessiones and its stories, including Augustine's own story, of moral reform and spiritual renewal. Connected with this encouragement to medieval readers to engage in self-discovery through narrating lives are two other ideas: the notion that the self is never fully revealed through language and the idea of elevating the emotions so as to have them function as markers of spiritual progress. In the fourth chapter, moreover, Stock compares Augustine to both earlier authors and later ones. Like Seneca, Augustine values writing and reading as ways of spiritual advancement, but unlike Abelard he does not think of the employment of linguistic signs as ways of achieving privileged insights into the intentions of our moral actions.

In chapters five and six, Stock turns his attention to the later Middle Ages in the form of studies of Francesco Petrarch's Secretum and St. Thomas More's Utopia. In the case of Petrarch, Stock claims, we find the notion of achieving self-understanding [End Page 87] through reading, which has now become nearly an end in itself. More's Utopia takes the notion of achieving spiritual insight through reading a step further toward a secular use, when he portrays ideal citizens as readers of books befitting them for effective participation in the utopian government.

In the final chapter, Stock turns to the forms of reading and reflection that medieval readers used. Distinguishing between lectio divina and lectio spiritualis, Stock argues that, while the former is text-based and returns to the biblical text after allowing for meditation as an exercise consequent upon oral reading, the latter type of reading is not so directly text-based; instead, it encourages its practitioners to use their own imaginary representations to guide self-examination and to induce emotions that aid in one's spiritual ascent.

Overall, this book is a profound study of the ways in which Augustine's philosophy of language and forms of literary expression influenced a wide variety of authors, from Hugh of St. Victor...

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