J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression

J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression

Author: Alexandra Effe

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-08-16

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 3319601016

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This book is about the metanarrative and metafictional elements of J. M. Coetzee’s novels. It draws together authorship, readership, ethics, and formal analysis into one overarching argument about how narratives work the boundary between art and life. On the basis of Coetzee’s writing, it reconsiders the concept of metalepsis, challenges common understandings of self-reflexive discourse, and invites us to rethink our practice as critics and readers. This study analyzes Coetzee’s novels in three chapters organized thematically around the author’s relation with character, reader, and self. Author and character are discussed on the basis of Foe, Slow Man, and Coetzee’s Nobel lecture, 'He and His Man'. Stories featuring the character Elizabeth Costello, or the figuration Elizabeth Curren, serve to elaborate the relation of author and reader. The study ends on a reading of Summertime, Diary of a Bad Year, and Dusklands as Coetzee’s engagement with autobiographical writing, analyzing the relation of author and self. It will appeal to readers with an interest in literary and narrative theory as much as to Coetzee scholars and advanced students.


Book Synopsis J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression by : Alexandra Effe

Download or read book J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression written by Alexandra Effe and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the metanarrative and metafictional elements of J. M. Coetzee’s novels. It draws together authorship, readership, ethics, and formal analysis into one overarching argument about how narratives work the boundary between art and life. On the basis of Coetzee’s writing, it reconsiders the concept of metalepsis, challenges common understandings of self-reflexive discourse, and invites us to rethink our practice as critics and readers. This study analyzes Coetzee’s novels in three chapters organized thematically around the author’s relation with character, reader, and self. Author and character are discussed on the basis of Foe, Slow Man, and Coetzee’s Nobel lecture, 'He and His Man'. Stories featuring the character Elizabeth Costello, or the figuration Elizabeth Curren, serve to elaborate the relation of author and reader. The study ends on a reading of Summertime, Diary of a Bad Year, and Dusklands as Coetzee’s engagement with autobiographical writing, analyzing the relation of author and self. It will appeal to readers with an interest in literary and narrative theory as much as to Coetzee scholars and advanced students.


J. M. Coetzee's Politics of Life and Late Modernism in the Contemporary Novel

J. M. Coetzee's Politics of Life and Late Modernism in the Contemporary Novel

Author: Marc Farrant

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1399507818

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Surveying the full breadth of J. M. Coetzee's career as both academic and novelist, this book argues for the necessity of rethinking his profound indebtedness to literary modernism in terms of a politics of life. Isolating a particular strain of late modernism, epitomised by Kafka and Beckett, Farrant claims that Coetzee's writings consistently demonstrate an agonistic engagement with the concept of life that involves an entanglement of politics and ethics, which supersedes the singular theoretical frameworks often applied to Coetzee, such as postcolonialism, posthumanism and animal studies. Running throughout his engagement with questions of modernity and colonialism, storytelling and life writing, human and non-human life, religion and post-Enlightenment subjectivity, Coetzee's politics of life yield a new literary cosmopolitanism for the twenty-first century; a powerful commentary on our interrelatedness that emphasises finitude and contingency as fundamental to the way we live together.


Book Synopsis J. M. Coetzee's Politics of Life and Late Modernism in the Contemporary Novel by : Marc Farrant

Download or read book J. M. Coetzee's Politics of Life and Late Modernism in the Contemporary Novel written by Marc Farrant and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveying the full breadth of J. M. Coetzee's career as both academic and novelist, this book argues for the necessity of rethinking his profound indebtedness to literary modernism in terms of a politics of life. Isolating a particular strain of late modernism, epitomised by Kafka and Beckett, Farrant claims that Coetzee's writings consistently demonstrate an agonistic engagement with the concept of life that involves an entanglement of politics and ethics, which supersedes the singular theoretical frameworks often applied to Coetzee, such as postcolonialism, posthumanism and animal studies. Running throughout his engagement with questions of modernity and colonialism, storytelling and life writing, human and non-human life, religion and post-Enlightenment subjectivity, Coetzee's politics of life yield a new literary cosmopolitanism for the twenty-first century; a powerful commentary on our interrelatedness that emphasises finitude and contingency as fundamental to the way we live together.


J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human

J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human

Author: Kai Wiegandt

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-01-22

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 3030293068

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“Kai Wiegandt’s study offers a nuanced, thoroughgoing and deeply engaging account of novelist J.M. Coetzee’s revision of our core ideas of the human—not least the human sense of uniqueness that we have invested in our belief in reason and conviction of God-likeness. He persuasively analyses the careful ways through which Coetzee deploys narrative as a mode of thinking through such human and post-human questions, so developing a fresh and original approach Wiegandt calls ‘anthropological realism’. Drawing on thinkers from across the French, German and Anglophone traditions, Wiegandt has produced a fiercely insightful and committedly interdisciplinary study.” — Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford “J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human offers a bold and compelling argument that is sure to make a serious intervention in Coetzee criticism. Wiegandt introduces several new fields of enquiry in relation to Coetzee’s fiction; the discussions thus reframe well-worn debates in an innovative way, making for unexpected insights in seemingly familiar critical terrain. The book opens up a valuable and thought-provoking perspective on Coetzee’s work, and will be of particular interest to the philosophically-minded Coetzee specialist.” — Carrol Clarkson, Professor and Chair of Modern English Literature, University of Amsterdam "Tracking skilfully across the shifting terrain of J. M. Coetzee’s fictions, Kai Wiegandt draws out their philosophical and literary intertexts in this lucid, erudite and compelling book, and thereby illuminates a fundamental concern that has persisted throughout Coetzee’s career: to probe and push our ideas of what it is to be human." — Jarad Zimbler, author of J. M. Coetzee and the Politics of Style This study argues that the most consistent concern in Coetzee’s oeuvre is the question of what makes us human. Ideas of the human that stress language use, reason, self-consciousness, autonomy and God-likeness are revised in his novels via a ‘poetic of testing’ which pits intertextually referenced ideas against each other in polyphonic narratives. In addition to examining the philosophical provenance of questions of the human in the work of such thinkers as Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Barthes and Foucault, the study charts Coetzee’s reconfiguration of elements drawn from major literary precursors like Cervantes, Heinrich von Kleist, Kafka and Beckett. Its leading argument is that Coetzee revises the Enlightenment idea of the human as a disengaged, autonomous thinker by demonstrating the limitations of reason; that he instead offers a view of humanity as engaged agency, a view most compatible with ideas developed in the discourse of post humanism, theories of materiality and social practice theory; and that his revisions depend on narrative form as much as they recommend a narrative approach to ideas in general.


Book Synopsis J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human by : Kai Wiegandt

Download or read book J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human written by Kai Wiegandt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Kai Wiegandt’s study offers a nuanced, thoroughgoing and deeply engaging account of novelist J.M. Coetzee’s revision of our core ideas of the human—not least the human sense of uniqueness that we have invested in our belief in reason and conviction of God-likeness. He persuasively analyses the careful ways through which Coetzee deploys narrative as a mode of thinking through such human and post-human questions, so developing a fresh and original approach Wiegandt calls ‘anthropological realism’. Drawing on thinkers from across the French, German and Anglophone traditions, Wiegandt has produced a fiercely insightful and committedly interdisciplinary study.” — Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford “J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human offers a bold and compelling argument that is sure to make a serious intervention in Coetzee criticism. Wiegandt introduces several new fields of enquiry in relation to Coetzee’s fiction; the discussions thus reframe well-worn debates in an innovative way, making for unexpected insights in seemingly familiar critical terrain. The book opens up a valuable and thought-provoking perspective on Coetzee’s work, and will be of particular interest to the philosophically-minded Coetzee specialist.” — Carrol Clarkson, Professor and Chair of Modern English Literature, University of Amsterdam "Tracking skilfully across the shifting terrain of J. M. Coetzee’s fictions, Kai Wiegandt draws out their philosophical and literary intertexts in this lucid, erudite and compelling book, and thereby illuminates a fundamental concern that has persisted throughout Coetzee’s career: to probe and push our ideas of what it is to be human." — Jarad Zimbler, author of J. M. Coetzee and the Politics of Style This study argues that the most consistent concern in Coetzee’s oeuvre is the question of what makes us human. Ideas of the human that stress language use, reason, self-consciousness, autonomy and God-likeness are revised in his novels via a ‘poetic of testing’ which pits intertextually referenced ideas against each other in polyphonic narratives. In addition to examining the philosophical provenance of questions of the human in the work of such thinkers as Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Barthes and Foucault, the study charts Coetzee’s reconfiguration of elements drawn from major literary precursors like Cervantes, Heinrich von Kleist, Kafka and Beckett. Its leading argument is that Coetzee revises the Enlightenment idea of the human as a disengaged, autonomous thinker by demonstrating the limitations of reason; that he instead offers a view of humanity as engaged agency, a view most compatible with ideas developed in the discourse of post humanism, theories of materiality and social practice theory; and that his revisions depend on narrative form as much as they recommend a narrative approach to ideas in general.


The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee

The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee

Author: Lucy Valerie Graham

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-08-24

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1350152064

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J. M. Coetzee – novelist, essayist, public intellectual, and Nobel Laureate in Literature (2003) – is widely recognized as one of the towering literary figures of the last half century. With chapters written by leading and emerging scholars from across the world, The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee offers the most comprehensive available exploration of the variety, range and significance of his work. The volume covers a wealth of topics, including: · The full span of Coetzee's work from his poetry to his essays and major fiction, including Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace and the Jesus novels · Biographical details and archival approaches · Coetzee's sources and influences, including engagements with Modernism, South African, Australian, Russian and Latin American literatures · Interdisciplinary perspectives, including on visual cultures, music, philosophy, computational systems and translation. The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee provides indispensable scholarly perspectives, covers emerging debates and maps the future direction of Coetzee studies.


Book Synopsis The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee by : Lucy Valerie Graham

Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee written by Lucy Valerie Graham and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. M. Coetzee – novelist, essayist, public intellectual, and Nobel Laureate in Literature (2003) – is widely recognized as one of the towering literary figures of the last half century. With chapters written by leading and emerging scholars from across the world, The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee offers the most comprehensive available exploration of the variety, range and significance of his work. The volume covers a wealth of topics, including: · The full span of Coetzee's work from his poetry to his essays and major fiction, including Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace and the Jesus novels · Biographical details and archival approaches · Coetzee's sources and influences, including engagements with Modernism, South African, Australian, Russian and Latin American literatures · Interdisciplinary perspectives, including on visual cultures, music, philosophy, computational systems and translation. The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee provides indispensable scholarly perspectives, covers emerging debates and maps the future direction of Coetzee studies.


J.M. Coetzee and the Archive

J.M. Coetzee and the Archive

Author: Marc Farrant

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-03-25

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1350165964

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Making extensive use of the rich archival material contained within the Coetzee collections in Texas and South Africa, from the earliest drafts and notebooks to the research notes and digital records that document his later career as both writer and academic, this volume investigates the historical, cultural and aesthetic contexts of Coetzee's oeuvre. Cutting-edge and interdisciplinary in approach, the book looks both at the prolific archival traces of Coetzee's early and middle work as well as examines his more recent work (which has yet to be archived), and a wide range of materials beyond the manuscripts, including family albums, school notebooks and correspondence. Navigating Coetzee's interests in areas as diverse as literature, photography, autobiography, philosophy, animals and embodied life, this is also an exploration of the archive as both theory and practice. It raises questions about the tensions, contradictions and discoveries of archival research, and suggests that a literary engagement with the past is crucial to a recovery of culture in the present.


Book Synopsis J.M. Coetzee and the Archive by : Marc Farrant

Download or read book J.M. Coetzee and the Archive written by Marc Farrant and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making extensive use of the rich archival material contained within the Coetzee collections in Texas and South Africa, from the earliest drafts and notebooks to the research notes and digital records that document his later career as both writer and academic, this volume investigates the historical, cultural and aesthetic contexts of Coetzee's oeuvre. Cutting-edge and interdisciplinary in approach, the book looks both at the prolific archival traces of Coetzee's early and middle work as well as examines his more recent work (which has yet to be archived), and a wide range of materials beyond the manuscripts, including family albums, school notebooks and correspondence. Navigating Coetzee's interests in areas as diverse as literature, photography, autobiography, philosophy, animals and embodied life, this is also an exploration of the archive as both theory and practice. It raises questions about the tensions, contradictions and discoveries of archival research, and suggests that a literary engagement with the past is crucial to a recovery of culture in the present.


J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power

J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power

Author: Emanuela Tegla

Publisher: Brill

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004308435

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In J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power, Emanuela Tegla offers an exploration of the interconnectedness between morality and individual conscience in Coetzee's fiction, as well as a narratological analysis of important stylistic aspects, such as tense, narrative silence or the moral implications of the novels' endings.


Book Synopsis J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power by : Emanuela Tegla

Download or read book J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power written by Emanuela Tegla and published by Brill. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power, Emanuela Tegla offers an exploration of the interconnectedness between morality and individual conscience in Coetzee's fiction, as well as a narratological analysis of important stylistic aspects, such as tense, narrative silence or the moral implications of the novels' endings.


Comfort in Contemporary Culture

Comfort in Contemporary Culture

Author: Dorothee Birke

Publisher: transcript Verlag

Published: 2020-10-31

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 3839449022

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Comfort is a prominent and highly loaded concept, as popular discourses on cosy environments, safe spaces, but also the importance of ›getting out of your comfort zone‹ attest. This volume is the first to investigate ›comfort‹ as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone in contemporary culture. Taken together, the contributions to the volume offer an overview of different approaches to and conceptualisations of comfort in linguistics, in literary, media, and cultural studies, and art history. They showcase how ›comfort‹ serves as a valuable lens to analyse contemporary artworks and developments, e.g. live theatre broadcasting or political interventions in the US-American media sphere.


Book Synopsis Comfort in Contemporary Culture by : Dorothee Birke

Download or read book Comfort in Contemporary Culture written by Dorothee Birke and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2020-10-31 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comfort is a prominent and highly loaded concept, as popular discourses on cosy environments, safe spaces, but also the importance of ›getting out of your comfort zone‹ attest. This volume is the first to investigate ›comfort‹ as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone in contemporary culture. Taken together, the contributions to the volume offer an overview of different approaches to and conceptualisations of comfort in linguistics, in literary, media, and cultural studies, and art history. They showcase how ›comfort‹ serves as a valuable lens to analyse contemporary artworks and developments, e.g. live theatre broadcasting or political interventions in the US-American media sphere.


The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee

The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee

Author: Jarad Zimbler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-04-30

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1108475345

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Presents lucid and exemplary critical essays, introducing readers to J. M. Coetzee's works, practices, horizons and relations.


Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee by : Jarad Zimbler

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee written by Jarad Zimbler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents lucid and exemplary critical essays, introducing readers to J. M. Coetzee's works, practices, horizons and relations.


Neo-Georgian Fiction

Neo-Georgian Fiction

Author: Jakub Lipski

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-07

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 100038859X

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This book contributes to the development of contemporary historical fiction studies by analysing neo-Georgian fiction, which, unlike neo-Victorian fiction, has so far received little critical attention. The essays included in this collection study the ways in which the selected twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels recreate the Georgian period in order to view its ideologies through the lens of such modern critical theories as performativity, post-colonialism, feminism or visual theories. They also demonstrate the rich repertoire of subgenres of neo-Georgian fiction, ranging from biographical fiction, epistolary novels to magical realism. The included studies of the diverse novelistic conventions used to re-contextualise the Georgian reality reflect the way we see its relevance and relation to the present and trace the indebtedness of the new forms of the contemporary novel to the traditional novelistic genres.


Book Synopsis Neo-Georgian Fiction by : Jakub Lipski

Download or read book Neo-Georgian Fiction written by Jakub Lipski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-07 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contributes to the development of contemporary historical fiction studies by analysing neo-Georgian fiction, which, unlike neo-Victorian fiction, has so far received little critical attention. The essays included in this collection study the ways in which the selected twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels recreate the Georgian period in order to view its ideologies through the lens of such modern critical theories as performativity, post-colonialism, feminism or visual theories. They also demonstrate the rich repertoire of subgenres of neo-Georgian fiction, ranging from biographical fiction, epistolary novels to magical realism. The included studies of the diverse novelistic conventions used to re-contextualise the Georgian reality reflect the way we see its relevance and relation to the present and trace the indebtedness of the new forms of the contemporary novel to the traditional novelistic genres.


Contemporary Second- and Third-Person Autobiographical Writing

Contemporary Second- and Third-Person Autobiographical Writing

Author: Christina Schönberger-Stepien

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-31

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1000850293

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This book explores 21st-century uses of the second- and third-person perspective in Anglophone autobiographical narratives by canonical male writers. Through detailed readings of contemporary autobiographical works by Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, J.M. Coetzee, and Salman Rushdie, the study demonstrates the multiple aesthetic, rhetorical, and un/ethical implications of the choice of narrative perspective as well as the uncommon step of articulating the self from a perspective which is not I. Drawing on (rhetorical) narratology and autobiography theory, the book engages with questions and tensions of subjectivity and relationality, the interplay of distance and proximity resulting from the narrative perspective, and its effects on the relationship between autobiographer, text, and reader. In addition, the book traces relevant guiding principles that the authors use to navigate their self-narratives in relation to others, such as questions of embodiment, visuality, grief, ethics, and politics. Situating the narratives in their socio-political and cultural context, the book uncovers to what extent these autobiographical narratives reflect the authors’ position between self-withdrawal and self-promotion as well as their response to questions of male agency, self-stylisation, and celebrity status.


Book Synopsis Contemporary Second- and Third-Person Autobiographical Writing by : Christina Schönberger-Stepien

Download or read book Contemporary Second- and Third-Person Autobiographical Writing written by Christina Schönberger-Stepien and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores 21st-century uses of the second- and third-person perspective in Anglophone autobiographical narratives by canonical male writers. Through detailed readings of contemporary autobiographical works by Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, J.M. Coetzee, and Salman Rushdie, the study demonstrates the multiple aesthetic, rhetorical, and un/ethical implications of the choice of narrative perspective as well as the uncommon step of articulating the self from a perspective which is not I. Drawing on (rhetorical) narratology and autobiography theory, the book engages with questions and tensions of subjectivity and relationality, the interplay of distance and proximity resulting from the narrative perspective, and its effects on the relationship between autobiographer, text, and reader. In addition, the book traces relevant guiding principles that the authors use to navigate their self-narratives in relation to others, such as questions of embodiment, visuality, grief, ethics, and politics. Situating the narratives in their socio-political and cultural context, the book uncovers to what extent these autobiographical narratives reflect the authors’ position between self-withdrawal and self-promotion as well as their response to questions of male agency, self-stylisation, and celebrity status.