English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The article focuses on Coetzee’s  The Death of Jesus  while referring also to the earlier two novels in what is called the ‘Jesus trilogy’. Instead of pursuing the trail of literary studies – novels of migration, of the postcolonies of the South, of whether in their formal representation the novels are allegories or not allegories – I turn towards religious studies. As the novels do, I grant significance to Coetzee’s ideas on a moral education in contexts of ideological duplicity; on the struggle of the soul between passion and reason; and on a message that society anticipates from an exceptional child who wishes to be a saviour. Beneath such concerns, I argue, we encounter the palimpsest of an older story: that of Jesus of Nazareth, to which the name ‘Jesus’ in the title of each novel should have pointed us but did not. Like the almost invisible author, the reader in secular times is reluctant, perhaps, to venture beyond earthly belief and engage with the challenge of what Walter Benjamin termed the ‘spiritual rag picker’ of ‘weak messianic power’. How does  The Death of Jesus , or indeed Coetzee, struggle with such a challenge?

J M Coetzee’s The Death of Jesus - Considerations of Living and Dying