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Newman's Apologia pro vita sua and the Traditions of the English Spiritual Autobiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Linda H. Peterson
Linda H. Peterson*
Affiliation:
Yale UniversityNew Haven, Connecticut
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Abstract

Although some readers argue that the Apologia pro vita sua is 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's Force 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's Confessions as 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 the Apologia and autobiography as a genre.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 100 , Issue 3 , May 1985 , pp. 300 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

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