History Of Autobiography In Antiquity Research Articles

Self-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography by Bradley L. Storin, and: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection: The Complete Translation by Bradley L. Storin

Reviewed by: Self-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography by Bradley L. Storin, and: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection: The Complete Translation by Bradley L. Storin Gabrielle Thomas Bradley L. Storin Self-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography Christianity in Late Antiquity 6 Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019 Pp. ix + 276. $95.00. Bradley L. Storin Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection: The Complete Translation Christianity in Late Antiquity 7 Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019 Pp. xiii + 234. $95.00 (hardcover) / $34.95 (softcover). For such a central figure in Christian orthodoxy and late antique Christianity it is somewhat surprising that a complete English translation of the letter collection of Gregory of Nazianzus emerged as recently as 2019, especially since Gregory is the earliest known Greek writer to compile his own letter collection, consisting of at least 240 letters (c. 383–84). And yet this collection of translations is the first of its kind. The companion volume provides a sharp account of how to make sense of Gregory’s letters, guided by the central question: “What authorial identity or identities did Gregory craft in his letter collection?” (EA, 99; throughout the review EA designates Self-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography and TCT designates Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection: The Complete Translation). Read together, these books provide a carefully argued response to the question of Gregory’s identity(ies). They provide fresh insight into the man also known to theologians, classicists, and scholars of late antique Christianity as “the Theologian,” as well as into the craft of autobiographical letter-writing in late antiquity. Storin’s volumes are the culmination of over a decade of work, presented as an extensive development of earlier doctoral work. The thesis is persuasive: Gregory’s letter collection serves as a carefully crafted autobiography. This argument is grounded alongside hundreds of lines of autobiographical poetry similar in subject matter. Add to this Gregory’s own admission that his great nephew Nicobulus asked for these letters because the young man’s education involved “rhetoric, literature and epistolary composition” (EA, 29). The companion volume is a sophisticated engagement with the literary construction of identity(ies) around three themes or “colors” which blur into one another, presenting a self-portrait of a “man of eloquence” (Chapter Three), a “father of philosophers” (Chapter Four), and a “Basilist” (Chapter Five). These interwoven identities are, as Storin argues, an attempt by Gregory to restore his reputation and authority, somewhat damaged by the events surrounding his departure from his episcopal see in Constantinople in 381. By attending to Gregory’s rhetoric and the role it plays in “defining him with and against broader political, intellectual and ecclesiastical developments” (EA, 25), Storin’s methodology follows the scholarship of Susanna Elm and Neil McLynn, [End Page 662] which has become foundational over the past two decades. Through positioning Gregory alongside figures such as the classical autobiographer Libanius of Antioch who, like Gregory, speaks of stonings by opponents, sea storms, and bouts of illness, this methodology confirms further Elm’s earlier appraisal of Gregory as a man who “fashioned himself a life that embodied and presented authority, even power” (Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012], 9). This is an important corrective to prior presentations of Gregory as one who is “a sensitive man who entered the arena of world affairs” (Georg Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity [London: Routledge, 1950], 609). The companion volume is crafted as carefully as the letter collection, since before exploring Gregory’s three-color portrait of himself, Storin devotes almost a quarter of the book to analyzing “the Architecture of the Letter Collection” (Chapter Two). He demonstrates the deficiency in what has become the standard numbering by exploring the manuscripts which form six families, dating between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Unlike the standard ordering, which is based upon ambiguous chronology and does not display the original structure of the collection, the manuscripts show little concern for chronology and instead form a coherence...

Wilhelm Dilthey’s Views on Autobiography

ABSTRACTThe paper examines the role of autobiographical literature in Dilthey’s ‘critique of historical reason.’ The purpose of the essay is (1) to offer an in-depth analysis of Dilthey’s concept of autobiography, (2) to place it into the larger framework of his lifelong epistemological project, and (3) to investigate the influence of Dilthey’s ideas on an early study of autobiography, Georg Misch’s History of Autobiography in Antiquity. The key argument is that Dilthey’s choice of the genre of autobiography to model his theory of understanding was not only a symptom of his misguided epistemological attempts, as many have suggested, but a potential cause of them. The article concludes that the inconsistencies of Dilthey’s argument regarding the value of autobiographical self-reflection for historical knowledge are most pronounced in the work of those who applied Dilthey’s concepts to the interpretation of actual autobiographical material, such as Georg Misch.

Hermeneutics and Literary Biography

If we take humanism to be a particular concept of individual (we might say that humanism is belief in autonomous subject), then we may trace modern concept of biography and autobiography as portrayal of growth of consciousness back to nineteenth-century historiography and philosophy. In his monumental study, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, Georg Misch writes, the history of autobiography is a history of selfawareness. Misch follows his teacher and father-in-law, Wilhelm Dilthey, by treating autobiography as 'highest and most instructive form in which understanding of life comes before us' and human self-awareness as a peculiarly Western phenomenon.' More recently, Georges Gusdorf goes as far as to equate autobiography and individuality with Western humanist culture: It [autobiography] expresses a concern peculiar to Western man. According to Gusdorf, autobiography is possible only when humanity must have emerged

The Victorian Approach to Autobiography

IN RECENT years the consideration of as a kind of literature has been seriously neglected. For the study of as a literary form, the standard works in print are Mrs. Burr's Autobiography: A Critical and Comparative Study (1909) and Georg Misch's History of Autobiography in Antiquity (1907). Misch's book, the more detailed of the two, does not touch on English autobiography, anid Burr's tries to include all the autobiographies of European literature in a rather hasty survey. Apart from these two books, the most important modern studies available are a few unpublished Ph.D. theses.' Literary scholars have apparently not yet decided that deserves the attention they have given to biography or the novel. It would not be true to say that the Victorians studied more than we do today, but it is true that they seem to have been more eager and more curious about it than we are. And this is a very natural attitude for them to have had, for the publication of autobiographies increased enormously during the era2 and the word autobiography itself was coined in their century (Southey, 1809, see NED).3 The emphatic state-

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. Georg Misch

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsA History of Autobiography in Antiquity. Georg Misch Werner JaegerWerner Jaeger Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 28, Number 2Apr., 1953 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2849712 Copyright 1953 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Book Review: A History of Autobiography in Antiquity (2 vols.)

Book Review: A History of Autobiography in Antiquity (2 vols.)

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. Georg Misch

<i>A History of Autobiography in Antiquity</i>. Georg Misch

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. George Misch

<i>A History of Autobiography in Antiquity</i>. George Misch

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity

Georg Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1951. pp. xii, viii, 706 (paged continuously). $8.50.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity.

A History of Autobiography in Antiquity.