Love As A Path To Grace: On The Narrative Ethics In J.M.Coetzee's Disgrace

J.M.Coetzee,the 2003 Nobel Laureate,is a prominent contemporary South African novelist,critic and academic.And his second Booker Prize winning work Disgrace,since the publication in 1999,has both provoked intense debates and received substantial reputations.The purpose of this thesis is to resituate the masterpiece from the perspective of narrative ethics,so as to initiate an “ethical reading” within the three levels as the story,the discourse and the reading,by seeking Coetzee's notion of ethics which values the importance of love.This thesis begins with a brief overview of J.M.Coetzee and his novel Disgrace,as well as an introduction to critical responses and discussions about the research ideas and framework.Chapter One focuses on the ethics of the novel expressed within its story level.This chapter breaks the constructed boundary of race,gender and species and explores the relationships between white and black,male and female and human and nonhuman animals to indicate Coetzee's concern for the Other.Chapter Two probes into the narrative techniques and reveals Coetzee's persistence to love which is hidden behind the story-telling skills.This chapter applies narrative theories to discuss Coetzee's narrative strategy in terms of focalization and intertextuality and his unique way in representing the evil.Chapter Three is an analysis of readers' engagements based on James Phelan's narrative ethics.Within the level of reading,Coetzee involves his readers into the mimetic and thematic sphere of the narrative,leading them to reexamine the story according to his own concept of grace and to make an appropriate ethical judgment during the reading process.The final part is a conclusion,in which a summary is made to conclude the ethical perceptions manifested within the three dimensions.By describing a disgraced professor's degradation and his final ethical awakening,Coetzee aims to address that South Africa,as Lurie who travels a hard path to grace,is also required to undergo a loving redemption to recover a measure of grace which is so conspicuously absent on this land.