Os Kafkas de Coetzee
A última lição de Elizabeth Costello
Keywords:
Kafka, Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, parable, contemporary novelAbstract
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to suggest that “At the gate,” the final chapter of J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, is not just appropriating Kafka's “Before the Law,” as is reasonably clear to any reader familiar with one of the most famous stories written by the Czech author, but he is also reconfiguring, in a much less obvious way, another of his texts “On parables”. Therefore, after examining the enigmatic parable and some of its critical readings, we will seek to show how Coetzee's “lesson” also draws, in a fictional key, a broad commentary on the distinctions between “this side” and “the other side” and about the statement that the whole parable, in the end, just means that the “inexplicable is inexplicable” and that, in doing so, it is also discussing the relations between literature and knowledge.
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