Object

Title: Modernist aesthetics and existentialist thought in J.M. Coetzee`s "The Childhood of Jesus"

Creator:

Glebova, Olga

Date:

2019

Resource Type:

rozdział w książce

Contributor:

Gołębiowska, Urszula - red. nauk. ; Kubasiewicz, Mirosława - red. nauk.

Group publication title:

Scripta Humana, 14

Abstract:

J.M. Coetzee`s art is deeply rooted in European literary tradition and reflects the complicated relationships between two twentieth-century European avant-garde movements - modernism and postmodernism. ; This chapter aims to explore Coetzee`s involvement with modernism in his novel "The Childhood of Jesus" (2013), an elusive allegorical narrative, peopled by displaced characters and set in an indeterminate location, strongly evocative of disconcerting Kafkaesque and Beckettian spaces. ; In this novel, Coetzee employs a distinctly modernist aesthetics of minimalism to deal with such themes as dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom and commitment. Moreover, Coetzee`s novel represents a continuation of modernist impulses to draw on existentialist thought in an attempt to grasp the human condition in specific historical circumstances. ; It is proposed in this chapter to read Coetzee`s novel as an existential fable enacting the fundamental sense of disorientation and bewilderment that is associated with the postmodern condition and that is akin to the pervasive feeling of anxiety defined by Heidegger`s term of "Geworfenheit" and expressed in Lukács`s conception of "transcendental homelessness".

Publisher:

Zielona Góra: Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego

Format:

application/pdf

Resource Identifier:

oai:zbc.uz.zgora.pl:78270

Pages:

123-135

Source:

Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego: Seria Scripta Humana, tom 14

Language:

eng

Rights:

Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego

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