CONTENTS -- Introduction -- I. CONFESSIONS 1-9 -- 1. Learning to Read -- Words -- Reading and Writing -- Self-Improvement -- 2. Intellectual Horizons -- Manichaeism -- Ambrose -- Neoplatonism -- 3. Reading and Conversion -- Alypius -- Simplicianus -- Ponticianus -- Augustine -- 4. From Cassiciacum to Ostia -- Cassiciacum -- Ostia -- II. THE ETHICS OF INTERPRETATION -- 5. Beginnings -- The Letters -- The Dialogues -- 6. Speaking and Reading -- On Dialectic -- The Teacher -- Defining the Reader -- 7. Toward Theory -- Tradition and Beliefs -- The "Uninstructed" -- Christian Doctrine -- 8. Memory, Self-Reform, and Time -- Remembering -- Conduct -- Time -- 9. The Self -- A Language of Thought -- The Reader and the Cogito -- The Road toward Wisdom -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.