Augustine's Confessions

What do we expect of an autobiography today, and how may we need to broaden our understanding of this form of writing to appreciate the Confessions?

Today, when we think of "Autobiography", we think of something along the lines of Frederick Douglas. We expect a story in chronological order of the major events in a person's life that shaped the way they turned out. That isn't exactly what we get when we read The Confessions, to me it seems like Augustine didn't write an autobiography, but a prayer journal almost. Augustine's autobiography is about his spiritual life, and what he went through, and it seems as though he wrote it to help other christians with their spiritual walk, but at the same time it seems as though he didn't write it for us to read. Now an autobiography isn't just a retelling of one's life it can be a guide book of sorts, written in order to help others.

The Dark Ages

Based on your viewing of the History Channel so far, how would you classify it as a historical source and why?

I would classify the History Channel's Dark Ages as a secondary source because there are no eyewitnesses and no one saw anything firsthand, however, the speakers gave us eyewitness accounts and they presented artwork and visual evidence, which was very carefully studied before it was presented yo the viewers.


How reliable do you consider this to be? why?

I consider this source to be very reliable, because these people have devoted a lot of time to studying these materials, and they brought in first hand accounts, although they didn't mention whose eyewitness accounts they were, but if they mentioned that I think that their source would have been even more reliable