Julia-

I don't know if you're considering grammar school texts at all in your study, but another potential avenue of the Soliloquies to consider would be St. Prosper of Aquitaine's Ex sententiis Augustini, also known as the Prospero. I know this text is being used in the medieval period, but haven't studied its use in the Renaissance period as of yet. The title in itself is intriguing, but I've never read anything relating Prospero's name back to this text. Good luck with the research.

Best,
       Mitch Harris

Mitchell M. Harris
Department of English
Augustana College
2001 S. Summit Ave.
Sioux Falls, SD 57197

"Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,
 Nothing goes right . . ."
                                  - William Shakespeare

On Jul 23, 2008, at 5:52 PM, Julia Staykova wrote:

perhaps I could explain why this is of any interest:

Every history of soliloquy (including the little jewel, Shakespeare's Soliloquies by Clemen and Hirsh's Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies) traces this history kicking off from Greek and Roman theatre, then leaping across a massive knowledge gap in the Middle Ages landingo nto the late morality stage, in convenient proximity to Marlowe's and Shakespeare's soliloquies.

The problem is, these histories are not aware of the text which invents the soliloquy as a discursive mode and a method for self-cognition: Augustine's Soliloquies. These travel to medieval devotional discourses through Hugo of St. Victor's Soliloquia de arrha animae and have a long history of confused reception: most medieval or early modern readers ever to have heard of the soliloquy know it through a pseudo-Augustinian text of that name. In comes John Harington, the sole recorded user of the word in Elizabethan England (so it seems), who has NOT read Augustine's solioquies but HAS read or seen Augustines Soliloquies (the pseudo-Augustinian apocrypha). It was most probably owned by Elizabeth, too.

Julia