J. M. Coetzee and Christianity

(Hardback)

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This book explores the nexus between religion and literature in J.M. Coetzees writings, as they relate to his readings of key Christian thinkers and ideas. In the process, it examines Coetzees extensive efforts at revising and reimagining a variety of Christian legacies across his full corpus.

Inspired by Coetzee's more overt, recent engagement with Christianity, this book focuses on tracing the prior subterranean developments across his early and middle works. It provides the most comprehensive study to date of his rewriting of Christian mores and rhetoric from eighteenth-century English novels; his frequent revisiting of the Christian author Fyodor Dostoevsky; and his pervasive re-imagining of traditional Christian subjects such as grace, redemption, and Jesus.

Informed by original archival material, this book illuminates Coetzees writing process, especially from Dusklands to the Jesus trilogy. It provides a sustained exploration of the contexts from which his abundance of Christian allusions and concepts were drawn, how they change in his hands, and how they effect changes in the new contexts of his innovative novels.

Author Bio

Alicia Broggi is a freelance writer who earned her doctorate at the University of Oxford, UK.