Newman'sApologia pro vita suaand the Traditions of the English Spiritual Autobiography

Abstract

Although some readers argue that theApologia pro vita suais not true autobiography, Newman in fact draws on models of spiritual autobiography in two traditions—one English and Protestant, the other Augustinian and Catholic. In the early chapters, Newman patterns his account on Thomas Scott'sForce of Truth, presenting his own religious development as a series of encounters with theological texts but replacing the typological hermeneutics of Scott (and of most other Protestant autobiographers) with an interpretive method derived from ecclesiastical history. In later chapters, as he narrates his conversion to Catholicism, Newman takes Augustine'sConfessionsas a model, invoking characteristically Augustinian figures to signal a turn to a Catholic literary tradition. More comprehensively, he adapts the multiple forms of confession that organize Augustine's work to shape his final statement of faith and to integrate the narrative and expository modes that distinguish theApologiaand autobiography as a genre.