The Gardening Fallacy: J. M. Coetzee’s Michael K as a Parody of Voltaire’s Candide

• Authors: Michta Kamil
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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.

Keywords

EN

prose fiction; J.M.Coetzee; Voltaire; parody; civil war; South Africa; allegory

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 23/1
• Pages: 41-50

Contributors

author

Michta Kamil

• University of Warsaw

References

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