At its most basic, an autobiography is the story of a person's life, written by that person. It is sometimes said that Augustine invented the modern autobiography. Augustine did not simply establish a pattern; he produced a work whose influence was so pervasive that all later autobiographers were affected by it, either positively or negatively. (The most famous example of a reaction against Augustine's Confessions appears in the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French Romantic writer and philosopher.) However, Augustine's Confessions was certainly not the first work of autobiography in Western literature. Numerous Classical authors had produced stories of their own lives, and Augustine also had specifically Christian examples to draw on, such as the passion narratives of martyred saints like Perpetua.
However, Augustine's autobiography is unique in several ways. The Confessions is not a straightforward account of the events of Augustine's life. In fact, Augustine frequently leaves out events that readers may consider important. The death of his father, for example, is mentioned only in passing, and large portions of his life are simply glossed over. On the other hand, Augustine gives special emphasis to seemingly small events, such as the theft of pears. In telling the story of his life, Augustine selects only those events that illustrate his spiritual development; everything else is pushed into the background. In focusing so tightly on his spiritual life, Augustine also trains his acute powers of observation on his own psychology. The intensely personal nature of Augustine's self-portrait is one of the aspects that has made it so appealing over the centuries. In the Confessions, Augustine is a fully rounded person: candid, acerbic, passionate, ambitious, restlessly intellectual, devoted to his friends, subject to flaws of pride and excess. Augustine's voice is uniquely identifiable, and it gives readers a genuine feel for his personality and character. Readers see Augustine not only from the outside, but from the inside.
