Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee’s writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee’s intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringing leadingfigures in the philosophy of literary fiction and ethics together with leading Coetzee scholars. The book is organized into three parts: the first part evaluates Coetzee with respect to notions of truth and justification. At issue is how the reader is to understand the ground on which Coetzee builds his ethical commitments. The second part considers the problem of language, in which ethics is rooted and on which it depends. The chapters of the third partposition Coetzee’s writing with respect to notions of social and moral solidarity, where, in regard to literature as such or experience as such, philosophy and literature together exercise an unrivaled right to be heard.
Contributors: Elisa Aaltola, Derek Attridge, David Attwell, Maria Boletsi, Carrol Clarkson, Simon During, Patrick Hayes, Alexander Honold, Anton Leist, Tim Mehigan, Christian Moser, Robert B. Pippin, Robert Stockhammer, Markus Winkler, Martin Woessner.
Tim Mehigan is Deputy Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Christian Moser is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bonn.
Tabella dei contenuti
Introduction: Coetzee’s Intellectual Landscapes – Tim Mehigan and Christian Moser
J. M. Coetzee on Truth, Skepticism, and Secular Confession in ‘The Age We Live In’ – Tim Mehigan
Social Order and Transcendence: J. M. Coetzee’s Poetics of Play – Christian Moser
Autobiography and Romantic Irony: J. M. Coetzee and Roland Barthes – Patrick Hayes
The Semantics of Barbarism in J. M. Coetzee’s Novel
Waiting for the Barbarians – Markus Winkler
In the Heart of the Empire: Coetzee and America – Martin Woessner
Faith, Irony, Salt and Possible Impossibilities: J. M. Coetzee’s
The Childhood of Jesus in Conversation with Zbigniew Herbert’s ‘From Mythology’ – Maria Boletsi
Coetzee’s Ethics of Language(s) – Robert Stockhammer
Force Fields – Carrol Clarkson
The Reading of
Don Quixote: Literature’s Migration into a New World – Alexander Honold
The Lives of Animals: From Rational Language to Speaking (of) Lions – Elisa Aaltola
Coetzee as Academic Novelist – Simon During
Character and Counterfocalization: Coetzee and the Kafka Lineage – Derek Attrige
J. M. Coetzee’s South African Intellectual Landscapes – David Attwell
Philosophical Fiction? On J. M. Coetzee’s
Elizabeth Costello – Robert B. Pippin
Cosmpolitanism, the Range of Sympathy, and Coetzee – Anton Leist
Index
Circa l’autore
CHRISTIAN MOSER is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bonn.
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