| As a part of the ongoing discourse on autobiography, this dissertation evaluates the convention of self-representation and the notion of the transcendent self in five confessional works. The Confessions of Augustine, the Secretum of Francis Petrarch, Martin Luther's 1545 Preface, the Autobiography of Ignatius Loyola and Teresa of Avila's Libro de la vida reveal the authors' ambitions of self-representation and of figuring Divine presence, the outside and transcendent authority in which they strive to ground their narratives.;Analyzing each of these texts through the theologies of their authors, this study offers a critique of the confessional aim of representing presence (of self, of God, of logocentric Truth) and of the rhetorical strategy particular to this sub-category of autobiography, the ransoming of will. For each of these writers of confession experiences and describes a loss of will on the spiritual, psychic and/or political levels which he or she figures in either predestinarian terms (Augustine, Petrarch, Luther) or as a mystical imperative (Loyola, Teresa of Avila). Essential to the writer's aim of representing presence is the attempt to ransom the will in bondage to fate and to language via a performative rhetoric of persuasion. Crucial to the success of this rhetoric is the belief of the reader, whose authority, however, remains problematic. By assessing the persuasive motives of confession, as well as the status of the reader, this study argues that the defense of the transcendent subject is inevitably a defense of the will, not completely in keeping with the theologies which describe its limitations. |
