Scriptural Myths in Two Contemporary British Novels
Loading...
Rychter Scriptural Myths in Two Contemporary British Novels.pdf (15.27 MB)
Authors
Date
2014
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Neisse Verlag & Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT
Abstract
The present article focuses on the ways the biblical myth of the Promised Land and the scriptural myth of the divinely inspired Holy Writ fi gure in two contemporary British novels: Jim Crace’s The Pesthouse (2007) and Will Self’s The Book of Dave (2006). Drawing on Gianni Vattimo’s concept of debolezza, the author of the article argues that both Crace and Self create “weak” versions of those myths, characterised both by a lucid grasp of the disintegration of the traditional forms of the myths, and by the resigned but charitable preservation of its bits. Shaped by the multi-faceted transformations the biblical myths have been undergoing, weak biblical/scriptural myths function as textual sites where the limits and potential of contemporary biblical/ scriptural myths is probed.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Rychter, Ewa. “Scriptural Myths in Two Contemporary British Novels.” Orbis Linguarum 40 (2014). Eds. Ewa Rychter, Edward Białek, Krzysztof Huszcza. Neisse Verlag & Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT: Dresden & Wrocław, 2014. 545-557.