Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction Rambling -- Chapter One Time, Focus and Narrative in Augustine's Confessions -- 1.1. Introduction -- 1.2. Meijering, Sorabji and Ricoeur -- 1.3. Time, Narrative and Emplotment -- 1.4. Long Expectation, Long Memory -- Chapter Two The Unfathomability of Sincerity: on the Seriousness of Augustine's Confessions -- 2.1. Pawn, Lease and Promise: Stanley Cavell and the Arrogation of Voice -- 2.2. John Henry Newman: Conversion and the Exclusion of the Non-serious -- 2.3. Augustine's Confessions: The Arrogation of Voice and the Promise of Conversion -- 2.4. The Promise of Conversion and the Return of Voice -- 2.5. Jokes and Poetry -- Chapter Three The Gift of Destiny and the Language of Dispossession -- 3.1. Introduction: The aporias of Augustinian Predestination -- 3.2. T he Holy Sinner -- 3.3. Calvin's Decretum Horribile -- 3.4. T he Language of Possession: Calvin Continued -- 3.5. T he Language of Dispossession: Dante on Sloth as Sin -- 3.6. T he Language of Dispossession: Henry James -- 3.6.1. Introduction: James and Moods -- 3.6.2. The Golden Bowl -- 3.6.3. The Wings of the Dove -- 3.7. Dante's Lobster and Eternity's Ennui -- Chapter Four. The Sustainability of Voice -- 4.1. The Epiphany of Scripture -- 4.2. A Grief Observed -- 4.2.1. Bernard's lament -- 4.2.2. Augustine's Tears -- 4.3. Politics and Finitude -- 4.4. The Human Condition as Nature Morte -- 4.4.1. Circulation without motion: Dante, James, Balzac -- 4.4.2. The Intermittences of Temporality: Augustine -- Chapter Five. Eternity's Ennui -- 5.1. Distentio Animi and the Hinterland of Grace -- 5.1.1. The World is Flat -- 5.1.2. Toward Semantic Impoverishment: from Flasch to Ricoeur -- 5.1.3. The Epitome of Semantic Richness: Lyotard -- 5.1.4. Further Semantic Impoverishment: Flasch Again.

5.2. The Logic of Terror: Jokes and Poetry Revisited -- 5.3. The Desire to Become an Indian -- 5.4. Late Style: Sero Te Amavi -- 5.5. Non-perseverance and the Boundaries of Love's Lateness -- 5.6. Endgame -- 5.6.1. Between Rising and Not Falling -- 5.6.2. Kafka's Tale about Nothing -- 5.6.3. Unrepentant: Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas -- 5.6.4. Vox Pueri/A Boy's Voice -- Bibliography -- Index of Personal Names.