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'

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

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, Ileana
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-)
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]