A history of confession: the dialogue between cynicism and grace in selected novels of J.M. Coetzee
- Authors: Hornby, Catherine Muriel
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: Coetzee, J. M., 1940- -- Criticism and interpretation , Cynicism in literature , Grace (Theology) in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2190 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002232 , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- -- Criticism and interpretation , Cynicism in literature , Grace (Theology) in literature
- Description: In introducing the four novels under discussion as a “History of Confession”, this study explores the resistance to the dominant discourse of ‘history’ offered by the sustained confessions of individuals. In examining Coetzee’s oeuvre it is possible to delineate the outline of a dialogue between cynicism and grace, and the effects of these on the process of confession in each of the works Chapter One, dealing with Age of Iron, draws on Levinas’ theory of ‘the Other’ in order to elucidate the role played by the interlocutor or confessor in the process of confession.The recognition of the passage of the self through the Other is integral to the attainment of a state of grace, without which confession cannot be brought to an end The countermanding claims of the writer's will-to-write and duty to society are illuminated as a source of cynicism which overwhelms the intervention of grace. The Master of Petersburg, discussed in Chapter Two, is a confession of the guilt and despair faced by the writer who sacrifices his soul to answer the urge to write. Chapter Three, which examines Coetzee’s excursion into autobiography, represents a continuation of the confessional trend. The distance between the narrator and protagonist of Boyhood illustrates the convolutions of self-deception in the process of confession. The chapter which deals with Disgrace identifies a new trend in Coetzee’s writing:the concern with animals. Levinas’ theory, which identifies the encounter with the Other as necessary to precipitate an intervention of grace, is again useful in explaining how Coetzee has postulated the unassimilable otherness of animals as primary to human ethical development. This chapter also concludes that Disgrace represents a high point in the recovery of both grace and agency in Coetzee’s oeuvre.The concluding chapter suggests that the accumulation of meanings to the term ‘grace’enables its definition as a semi-religious abstraction. Coetzee suggests that belief in its existence has the power to affect interactions on the physical plane, especially those between the self and the Other.
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The use of the female voice in three novels by J.M. Coetzee
- Authors: Graham, Lucy Valerie
- Date: 1997
- Subjects: Coetzee, J. M., 1940- -- Criticism and interpretation , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- Foe , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- In the heart of the country , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- Age Of Iron , Women in literature , Voice in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2224 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002267 , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- -- Criticism and interpretation , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- Foe , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- In the heart of the country , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- Age Of Iron , Women in literature , Voice in literature
- Description: This study investigates J.M. Coetzee's use of the female voice in In the Heart of the Country, Foe and Age of Iron, and is based on the premise that Coetzee's position as a male author using a female voice is important for readings of these novels. Although the implications of Coetzee's strategy are examined against the theoretical background of feminist or gender-related discourses, this study does not attempt to claim Coetzee for feminism, nor to prove him a misogynist. Instead, it focuses on the specific positional and narrative possibilities afforded by Coetzee's use of a female voice. Chapter One comments on the fact that Coetzee's strategy of "textual cross-dressing" has not been given much critical attention in the past, observing that research on South African literature has largely been limited to studies of racial and colonial problematics. This introductory chapter mentions that the different female narrators in Coetzee's novels articulate aspects of a discourse in crisis, resulting in profound ambivalence in their representation. Chapter Two observes that the female voices in Coetzee's novels invoke the textual illusion of a speaking/writing female body, and explains that this is useful in expressing aspects of what Coetzee refers to as the suffering body. Although Coetzee appropriates a female narrative position and employs certain subversive textual elements associated with "the feminine", attempts made by certain critics to label Coetzee's writing as ecriture feminine are rejected as highly problematic. Instead, the study contends that the femaleness of the narrators relative to "masculine" discursive power enables Coetzee to perform a critique of power "from a position of weakness". Furthermore, the presence of certain "feminine" elements within these narrators suggests Coetzee's affiliation with characteristics derided within phallocratic discourses, and becomes a strategic means of fictive self-positioning, of figuring his own position as a dissident. Chapter Three is a study of In the Heart of the Country, and proposes that Magda is represented as a typical nineteenth century hysteric. Her hystericized narrative is linked to certain avant-garde narratives, such as the nouveau roman and "New Wave" cinematography, both cited by Coetzee as influences on the novel. Furthermore, the novel provides insight into the ambiguous role of the hysteric and dramatises the position of the dissident: on a discursive level Magda's narrative is subversive, and yet in terms of social "reality" her revolt is ineffectual. Chapter Four addresses the issue of author-ity in Foe, and draws on Coetzee's affiliation with Susan Barton, the struggling authoress, whose narrative reveals the levels of power and authority operating within, novelistic discourse when she asks "Who ,is speaking me?". The study observes that Foe also performs a critique of the power-seeking project of liberal feminism, as the novel sets Susan's quest for authorship against the background of a more radical "otherness", that of Friday. Chapter Five asserts that Age of Iron exploits the ethical possibilities of a maternal discourse. Tracing parallels between images of motherhood in psychoanalytic feminism and in Age of Iron, this chapter argues that Kristeva's theory of abjection is relevant for a reading of Elizabeth Curren's position as a mother who has cancer. The childbirth metaphor as it appears in Age- of Iron becomes an alternative and profoundly ethical way of figuring the process of novel writing.
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