The Long Road to Grace: Romantic Influence in Coetzee’s Disgrace
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This paper investigates J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) in relations with British Romanticism. Although Pamela Cooper and Kimberly Wedeven Segall note the Romantic or other literary metaphors of this novel, serious attempts to read the main character David Lurie in relation with Wordsworth and Byron have yet to be made. Romanticism serves as a trope for Lurie’s past-orientedness. By presuming himself a European, or an English, Lurie tries to mask his actions with European color, mostly with the garments of literary Romantics that remind him of those good old days when he was granted with a privileged social position and deemed to be attractive by women. His “romantic” approach to a coloured student ends in a sexual harassment charge and costs him his position. This paper underscores certain moral changes in the privileged and aged white elite protagonist. After black males’ break-in in Lucy’s household that caused Lurie to be set on fire and his daughter to be gang-raped, Lurie realizes limitations of his understanding of the outer world. Lurie’s moral transformation, this paper asserts, is indicated by his attempt at a radical rewriting of Byron's work, in which he plans to give voice to one of the poet's most marginalized characters. His gradual, yet unswerving, adjustment to the changed realities of the post-Apartheid South Africa is testified to by his acceptance of the unborn half-black child, the tragic consequence of the gang rape, as his grandson.
Abstract
This paper investigates J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) in relations with British Romanticism. Although Pamela Cooper and Kimberly Wedeven Segall note the Romantic or other literary metaphors of this novel, serious attempts to read the main character David Lurie in relation with Wordsworth and Byron have yet to be made. Romanticism serves as a trope for Lurie’s past-orientedness. By presuming himself a European, or an English, Lurie tries to mask his actions with European color, mostly with the garments of literary Romantics that remind him of those good old days when he was granted with a privileged social position and deemed to be attractive by women. His “romantic” approach to a coloured student ends in a sexual harassment charge and costs him his position. This paper underscores certain moral changes in the privileged and aged white elite protagonist. After black males’ break-in in Lucy’s household that caused Lurie to be set on fire and his daughter to be gang-raped, Lurie realizes limitations of his understanding of the outer world. Lurie’s moral transformation, this paper asserts, is indicated by his attempt at a radical rewriting of Byron's work, in which he plans to give voice to one of the poet's most marginalized characters. His gradual, yet unswerving, adjustment to the changed realities of the post-Apartheid South Africa is testified to by his acceptance of the unborn half-black child, the tragic consequence of the gang rape, as his grandson.
참고문헌 (10)
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