Patrick Riley. Character and Conversion in Autobiography: Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and Sartre.(Book Review)

Patrick Riley. Character and Conversion in Autobiography: Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and Sartre. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2004. 256 pp. ISBN 0-813-92292-5, $42.50.

Character and conversion are terms in which one might express the problem of the autobiographical project. Character is stable and enduring, whereas conversion denotes radical change, and specifically change of character. This is the tension that Patrick Riley attempts to deal with in his treatment of autobiography. Conversion is the source of intelligibility and structure of the narrative account of the self. At the same time, it raises the question of how the narrative account can claim to be about the same self, for conversion seems to mark the beginning of a new self.

Riley examines the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Essays of Montaigne (especially "Of repentance"), Descartes's Discourse on Method, Rousseau's Confessions, Dialogues, and Reveries, and Sartre's Words from the point of view of the problem of coherence generated by the role of conversion in narratives of the self. Ultimately, he discovers an evolution in the genre, most obviously captured in the change from Augustine's religious …