A conversation between monkeys: mishaps of a dialogue between Africa and the other

Authors

  • Lucia Helena UFF

Keywords:

Coetzee. Kafka. Dialogue. Fiction. South Africa. World

Abstract

This article intends to discuss the web of texts created by J.M.Coetzee to entangle three literary texts: his two novels The lives of animals (1999) and Elizabeth Costello (2003), and Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy”, taken from A Country Doctor [Ein Landarzt] (1919). How are we to understand this textual network that spreads itself in a sharp and delicate way? While inteweaving the marks of authorship, autobiography, and fiction, Coetzee’s text indicates both the porosity and complexity of the act of writing. With this capacity of branching, Coetzee’s texts highlight the thin bordes between reality and the world of “might have been” that literature creates. This essay aims at examining these issues, which connect the games of language to the representation of today’s literary language.

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Author Biography

Lucia Helena, UFF

Doutorou-se em 1983 pela UFRJ, na área de Teoria da literatura. Fez pósdoutorado em 1989, em Literatura Comparada, nos Estados Unidos, na Brown University. Ministra cursos em universidades norte-americanas e vem atuando como conferencista nos Estados Unidos e na Europa. Integrou durante muito tempo a cadeira de Teoria da Literatura na UFRJ. Hoje é professora Titular da UFF e pesquisadora 1-A do CNPq. Dentre suas publicações destacam-se Totens e tabus da modernidade brasileira, 1985 (com prêmio nacional), Uma literatura antropofágica,1982; Escrita e poder, 1985; A cosmo-agonia de Augusto dos Anjos, 1984; Modernismo brasileiro e vanguarda, 1996; Nem musa, nem medusa: itinerários da escrita em Clarice Lispector , 2ª. Ed 2006; e A solidão tropical: a modernidade do Brasil e de Alencar, 2006. No prelo, tem o livro Ficções do desassossego: o romance e a consciência trágica, a sair em 2009. Organizou, para a editora Contra Capa, os volumes: Nação-invenção: ensaios sobre o nacional em tempos de globalização, 2004; Literatura e poder, 2006 e Literatura, intelectuais e a crise da cultura, 2007.

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Published

2008-06-30

How to Cite

Helena, L. (2008). A conversation between monkeys: mishaps of a dialogue between Africa and the other. Gragoatá, 13(24). Retrieved from https://periodicos.uff.br/gragoata/article/view/33170

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 24 (2008): Brazil and Africa: trajectories, faces and destination

Section

Literature Articles

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