Miles Hollingworth
Autor de Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography
Sobre El Autor
Miles Hollingworth is Visiting Research Fellow of St. John's College, Durham. His writing on Augustine has won awards from the Society of Authors (2009 Elizabeth Longford Grant for Historical Biography) and the Royal Society of Literature (2009 Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction). He is presently mostrar más writing a new scholarly biography of Augustine which will also be published Continuum. mostrar menos
Obras de Miles Hollingworth
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1981-07-16
- Género
- male
- Educación
- Durham University (BA - Joint Hons)
Durham University (MA)
Durham University (PhD) - Ocupaciones
- Tutorial Fellow in Political Theory, Durham University
Visiting Research Fellow, St. John's College, Durham
Visiting Fellow, New College, University of Edinburgh
Research Fellow in the History of Ideas, St. John's College, Durham
Professor at the Patristic Institute, the Augustinianum, Rome - Premios y honores
- 2009 Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction (Royal Society of Literature)
2009 Elizabeth Longford Grant for Historical Biography - Agente
- Rachel Calder (The Sayle Literary Agency)
Miembros
Reseñas
Listas
Premios
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 4
- Miembros
- 82
- Popularidad
- #220,761
- Valoración
- 2.4
- Reseñas
- 2
- ISBNs
- 18
One cannot judge a book by its cover: that old saw is especially true here. While I was not familiar -- ignorant even -- of Miles Hollingworth before I purchased Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography, the title, traditionally beautiful cover art, and publisher (Oxford University Press) not only intrigued me but gave me confidence in my purchase. After forcing myself to wade through this series of thoughts in search of an editor, I can only rate this work one star on the Goodreads spectrum.
As I've written in other reviews, a work of nonfiction must deliver on its title as a starting point. The title sets a framework -- a gauge of expectations. Mine were sorely disappointed, which I'll address momentarily. But even with the title (and implied expectations) stripped away, this monograph would be hard-pressed to be judged as an academic book worthy of the OUP imprint.
Back to the title. Biographies are a genre of their own, and thus need little explanation. The etymology literally means "life writing." In this particular case, the biography was described as an "intellectual" one; thus I believe my expectations were well within the bounds of reason by thinking that this work would explore the intellectual and philosophical precursors to Augustine's own thought, as well as perhaps the influence of Augustine's own philosophy on the intellectual tradition that came after him.
Rather, while this work does have brief accounts of Augustine's early days and death near the beginning and end of it -- and, to be fair, an obligatory chronology of his life at the beginning -- the balance consists of long quotes from both Augustine and various other writers, along with Hollingworth's own musing (sometimes related to the quotation, sometimes not). The book would be half its length were it not for the long-winded quotations. And there is little in the way of biographical order involved. A better title for this book might be: Intellectual Snippets: Musings in the History of Ideas. By that title, the book might have some merit. But considered as an Augustinian intellectual biography, the book fails miserably.
Hollingworth's musings are all over the map. Consider the following: around page 229 in the Kindle version, over the span of a few paragraphs, Hollingworth moves from some creative urge of Augustine in the Confessions, to a quote on vomiting (not just any vomiting, mind you, but the type mentioned in the Aeneid and then glossed by Montaigne), to a reference to Beethoven via his countryman Nietzsche, all wrapped up in a little bow by Plato.
Lest one think that the aforementioned example is an anomaly, let's look at the index -- ostensibly compiled by both Hollingworth and an editor or two. Assuming it to be accurate, it is telling that there are as many references to Aquinas (1) as Hannah Arendt (also 1). Or WH Auden, King Bahram I, Ernest Barker, Buddha, Edmund Burke, GK Chesterton, Cecil Day Lewis, Michel Foucault, Edmund Husserl, James Joyce, Gottfried Leibniz, John Stuart Mill, Vladimir Nabokov, Howard Nemerov, Blaise Pascal, Philo, Pliny (Elder or Younger? doesn't say), Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Seneca, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, William Styron, Tertullian, and William Wordsworth: each has precisely one reference.
I forgot to mention F. Scott Fitzgerald. He also receives a reference. As does Vaclav Havel -- Hollingwood would not want to miss the connection between Augustine and the Czech literary scene! Also Immanuel Kant, Pierre Simon Laplace, Lucretius and St. Peter: one reference each. Ned Rorem also got one.
This list is not exhaustive, by the way.
Calvinism merits a single reference, but John Calvin doesn't get one himself. That guy Luther -- not the civil rights one, but the Reformation one -- he also gets one reference. It is as if Hollingworth's goal was to include every author he's ever read, and think up a way to connect the author to Augustine.
Bertrand Russell? Five references. To Hollingworth's credit, the great Augustinian and late antiquity scholar Peter Brown is referenced on six different occasions; one could only hope that it was more.… (más)