J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power

J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Power
Author: Emanuela Tegla
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2016-01-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 900430844X

“For I was not, as I liked to believe, the indulgent pleasure-loving opposite of the cold rigid Colonel. I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy, he the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow.” Thus the Magistrate confesses in Coetzee’s 1980 novel Waiting for the Barbarians. The present study looks closely into the unsettling effects Coetzee’s novels have on the reader and explores the interconnectedness between stylistic choices and moral insights. Its overall aim is to disclose the effectiveness of Coetzee’s narrative strategies to prompt the reader to engage in self-questioning and radical revisions of personal and social moral assumptions. “This is an original and ground-breaking study of Coetzee’s work. Dr Tegla’s insightful close-readings highlight the ways in which Coetzee fictionalizes a variety of moral dilemmas. In particular, she shows how he turns narrative into an instrument for moral discernment. Her narratological approach advances our understanding of his achievements, and I can state without reservation that this book will be referred to as a landmark in Coetzee criticism.” — Richard Bradford, Research Professor and Senior Distinguished Research Fellow, University of Ulster

J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading

J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading
Author: Derek Attridge
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2004
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

Attridge argues that it is the most discomforting & difficult elements in the work of Coetzee that make his writings so rewarding of study. This book follows the author's lead in exploring a number of issues, including interpretation & literary judgement, & responsibility to the other.

J.M. Coetzee and Ethics

J.M. Coetzee and Ethics
Author: Anton Leist
Publisher:
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2010
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780231148412

In 2003, the South African writer J.M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his riveting portrayals of racial repression, sexual politics, the guises of reason, and the hypocrisy of human beings toward animals and nature, Coetzee was credited with being "a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilization." The film of his novel Disgrace, starring John Malkovich, brought his challenging ideas to a new audience. Anton Leist and Peter Singer have assembled an outstanding group of contributors who probe deeply into Coetzee's extensive and extra ordinary corpus. They explore his approach to ethical theory and philosophy and Pay Particular attention to his representation of the human-animal relationship. They also confront Coetzee's depiction of the elementary conditions of life, the origins of morality, the recognition of value in others, the sexual dynamics between men and women, the normality of suppression, and possibility of equality in postcolonial society, With its wide-ranging consideration of philosphical issues, especially in relation to fiction, this volume stands alone in its extraordinary exchange of ethical and literary inquiry. This collection takes stock of J.M. Coetzee's impact from a number of interesting angles, Including animals, sexuality, race, and reason. The time is truly ripe for such a volume. Philosophers Who are interested Coetzee's work will find these essays useful for their own research, and readers of Coetzee who share an interest in philosophy will be able to further explore those interests."-Matthew Calarco, California State University at Fullerton, and author of Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida

J. M. Coetzee and Ethics

J. M. Coetzee and Ethics
Author: Anton Leist
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 569
Release: 2010-06-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0231520247

In 2003, South African writer J. M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his riveting portrayals of racial repression, sexual politics, the guises of reason, and the hypocrisy of human beings toward animals and nature. Coetzee was credited with being "a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilization." The film of his novel Disgrace, starring John Malkovich, brought his challenging ideas to a new audience. Anton Leist and Peter Singer have assembled an outstanding group of contributors who probe deeply into Coetzee's extensive and extraordinary corpus. They explore his approach to ethical theory and philosophy and pay particular attention to his representation of the human-animal relationship. They also confront Coetzee's depiction of the elementary conditions of life, the origins of morality, the recognition of value in others, the sexual dynamics between men and women, the normality of suppression, and the possibility of equality in postcolonial society. With its wide-ranging consideration of philosophical issues, especially in relation to fiction, this volume stands alone in its extraordinary exchange of ethical and literary inquiry.

The Novel and the New Ethics

The Novel and the New Ethics
Author: Dorothy J. Hale
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2020-11-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1503614077

For a generation of contemporary Anglo-American novelists, the question "Why write?" has been answered with a renewed will to believe in the ethical value of literature. Dissatisfied with postmodernist parody and pastiche, a broad array of novelist-critics—including J.M. Coetzee, Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, Gish Jen, Ian McEwan, and Jonathan Franzen—champion the novel as the literary genre most qualified to illuminate individual ethical action and decision-making within complex and diverse social worlds. Key to this contemporary vision of the novel's ethical power is the task of knowing and being responsible to people different from oneself, and so thoroughly have contemporary novelists devoted themselves to the ethics of otherness, that this ethics frequently sets the terms for plot, characterization, and theme. In The Novel and the New Ethics, literary critic Dorothy J. Hale investigates how the contemporary emphasis on literature's social relevance sparks a new ethical description of the novel's social value that is in fact rooted in the modernist notion of narrative form. This "new" ethics of the contemporary moment has its origin in the "new" idea of novelistic form that Henry James inaugurated and which was consolidated through the modernist narrative experiments and was developed over the course of the twentieth century. In Hale's reading, the art of the novel becomes defined with increasing explicitness as an aesthetics of alterity made visible as a formalist ethics. In fact, it is this commitment to otherness as a narrative act which has conferred on the genre an artistic intensity and richness that extends to the novel's every word.

J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading

J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading
Author: Derek Attridge
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2021-04-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226818772

Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coetzee is one of the most widely taught contemporary writers, but also one of the most elusive. Many critics who have addressed his work have devoted themselves to rendering it more accessible and acceptable, often playing down the features that discomfort and perplex his readers. Yet it is just these features, Derek Attridge argues, that give Coetzee's work its haunting power and offer its greatest rewards. Attridge does justice to this power and these rewards in a study that serves as an introduction for readers new to Coetzee and a stimulus for thought for those who know his work well. Without overlooking the South African dimension of his fiction, Attridge treats Coetzee as a writer who raises questions of central importance to current debates both within literary studies and more widely in the ethical arena. Implicit throughout the book is Attridge's view that literature, more than philosophy, politics, or even religion, does singular justice to our ethical impulses and acts. Attridge follows Coetzee's lead in exploring a number of issues such as interpretation and literary judgment, responsibility to the other, trust and betrayal, artistic commitment, confession, and the problematic idea of truth to the self.

J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression

J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression
Author: Alexandra Effe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2017-08-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319601016

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.

Elizabeth Costello

Elizabeth Costello
Author: J. M. Coetzee
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1524705500

J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. Since 1982, J. M. Coetzee has been dazzling the literary world. After eight novels that have won, among other awards, two Booker Prizes, and most recently, the Nobel Prize, Coetzee has once again crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale. Told through an ingenious series of formal addresses, Elizabeth Costello is, on the surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.

Radical Hope

Radical Hope
Author: Jonathan Lear
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674040023

Presents the story of Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation. This title contains a philosophical and ethical inquiry into a people faced with the end of their way of life.