Miguel de Cervantes and J.M. Coetzee: An Unacknowledged Paternity
TL;DR: Coetzee as discussed by the authors pointed to the 17th-century Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes, as one important literary predecessor of the contemporary South African writer J.M. Coetzee, a relation that has generally passed unnoticed among critics.
Abstract: SummaryThis article points to the 17th-century Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes, as one important literary predecessor of the contemporary South African writer, J.M. Coetzee, a relation that has generally passed unnoticed among critics. This relation is brought to the foreground in Coetzee’s most recent novel, The Childhood of Jesus (2013), but it also underlies his previous ones, Age of Iron (1998), Disgrace (2000), and Slow Man (2005), as well as his critical pieces, “The Novel Today” (1988) and the “Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech” (1992b), all of which contain echoes of Cervantes’s masterpiece, Don Quixote ([1605, 1615]2005). My argument is that the conflict between imagination and reality, the novel and history, central in Coetzee’s fictional and non-fictional production, needs to be re-examined as a fundamentally Cervantine one. The adventures and fate of Don Quixote lie behind Coetzee’s exploration of whether literature may be an effective and ethical guide in our dealings with reality, whethe...
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: Coetzee as mentioned in this paper discussed the development of his ideas about the notion of the real South or "real South", as opposed to the "mythic South", through a brief analysis of Borges's tale "El Sur" [The South] and Coetzee's novel Disgrace.
Abstract: This essay addresses some of the relations that can be traced between, on the one hand, J. M. Coetzee and Jorge Luis Borges and, on the other, the concept of the Global South and Coetzee’s recent approach to Latin America. The development of his ideas about the notion of the South or “real South,” as opposed to the “mythic South,” is discussed and illustrated through a brief analysis of Borges’s tale “El Sur” [“The South”] and Coetzee’s novel Disgrace. These two texts help us in focusing Coetzee’s rejection of the so-called “Northern Gaze,” a Westernised world-view dominated by the English language, and his preference for Spanish as the language for the initial publication of his latest books.
01 Jan 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the gerontological implications of amputation and their influence on self-understanding in J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man (2005) and argue that the acceptance of an altered body can enable the individual to come to terms with broader existential concerns.
Abstract: This chapter discusses the gerontological implications of amputation and their influence on self-understanding in J.M. Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005). It considers the ways in which Paul Rayment’s response to the amputation of his leg following a cycling accident highlights the complex entanglements of age, masculinity, and the need for human connection. The chapter argues that Paul’s surgery effectively inaugurates his senescence, thereby casting him suddenly and irrevocably into the margins of Australian society. Emotionally unstrung and keenly aware of his mortality, Paul increasingly associates the loss of his leg with the loss of opportunities to establish a legacy. Ultimately, Coetzee’s novel shows how the acceptance of an altered body can enable the individual to come to terms with broader existential concerns.
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: Giles as discussed by the authors argues that Coetzee's novels exhibit a desire to take ownership, as a man, of male violence against women by examining the forces behind that violence, concluding that there is no disinterested aesthetic.
Abstract: J.M. Coetzee’s novels frequently comment on male preoccupation with female beauty that often leads to women’s disempowerment. Giles provides critical insight into Coetzee’s interrogation of Platonic ideas of love and Kantian disinterested aesthetics, inflected by Cervantes and Samuel Richardson, in her examination of three novels: Disgrace, Slow Man, and The Schooldays of Jesus. Arguing that Coetzee engages the question of whether a ‘male-writer-pornographer’ can represent power and desire ethically and philosophically, Giles observes that the novels exhibit a desire to take ownership, as a man, of male violence against women by examining the forces behind that violence. Reading Coetzee as performing a postcritical feminist critique of the traditional aesthetics that ignored sexual politics, she concludes that for Coetzee there is no disinterested aesthetic.
References
More filters
Book•
12 Aug 1992
TL;DR: Beckett's point of view in "The Comedy of Point of View in Beckett's Murphy" (1970) and "The Temptations of Style" (1973).
Abstract: * Author's Note * Editor's Introduction Beckett * Interview * The Comedy of Point of View in Beckett's Murphy (1970) * The Manuscript Revisions of Beckett's Watt (1972) * Samuel Beckett and the Temptations of Style (1973) * Remembering Texas (1984) The Poetics of Reciprocity * Interview
411 citations
Book•
[...]
01 Sep 1990
TL;DR: Curren as discussed by the authors describes her relationship with the tramp, Vercueil, who becomes her silent companion and confessor as she tries to make her peace with the world.
Abstract: Dying of cancer, Elizabeth Curren writes a testament to her "lost" daughter, now living in America. Her account describes her relationship with the tramp, Vercueil, who becomes her silent companion and confessor as she tries to make her peace with the world. The novel is an anguished lament for a country on the cusp of change and for all children lost to South Africa's age of iron.
227 citations
[...]
214 citations