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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:A quest for the 'New man' in times of transition: faith, unfaith and the pitfalls of Utopia in JM Coetzee's 'The Master of Petersburg'
Author:Dimitriu, IleanaISNI
Year:2016
Periodical:Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa (ISSN 2159-9130)
Volume:28
Issue:2
Pages:159-172
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:novels
political conditions
About person:John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-)ISNI
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/1013929X.2016.1202045
Abstract:The author offers a re-reading of South African writer JM Coetzee's novel, The Master of Petersburg (1994), according to which she seeks to answer the question: Why return to this particular novel today? In pursuing the question, she accords a greater directness than hitherto to both religious and political reference. Her point is to locate the novel, both locally and internationally, in a current climate of religious-cum-political demagoguery and conviction. She argues that, in retrospect, we may appreciate Coetzee's uncanny prescience: a vision that evokes the temper of the world today. Central to her analysis is the figure of the 'new man'; forged in radicalised political times and treading a precarious path between faith and unfaith, utopia and delusion, revolutionary fervour and collective amnesia. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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