The gardening fallacy: J.M. Coetzee’s Michael K as a parody of Voltaire’s Candide
The gardening fallacy: J.M. Coetzee’s Michael K as a parody of Voltaire’s Candide
Author(s): Kamil MichtaSubject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: prose fiction; J.M.Coetzee; Voltaire; parody; civil war; South Africa; allegory
Summary/Abstract: The aim of the essay is to demonstrate that John Maxwell Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K can be perceived as a parody of Voltaire’s Candide, a novel intended as a ridicule of Leibniz’s Theodicy. While Voltaire proposed to withdraw from the world and ‘‘to cultivate one’s own garden” as a remedy to Leibniz’s ill-conceived optimism, Coetzee shows that Voltaire’s praise of passivity and life in accordance with nature, symbolized by a retreat into gardening, is as erratic as Leibniz’s philosophy. The essay concludes that Coetzee’s Michael K can be treated as a caricature of Voltaire’s Candide.
Journal: ANGLICA - An International Journal of English Studies
- Issue Year: 23/2014
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 41-50
- Page Count: 10
- Language: English