What is it about?

Elizabeth Curren, in Coetzee’s Age of Iron, is a retired Classics lecturer. Greek and Roman mythology, and Latin and Ancient Greek, are part of her consciousness. Several critics have discussed Mrs Curren’s humanistic, enlightenment sensibility, shaped by a liberal education which has come to be seen by many as irrelevant in the South Africa of the novel, and which therefore functions as a symbol of the marginalisation of western liberal culture in Africa. Other critics have pointed out the importance of Christian and biblical discourse in the novel. Latin, in the form of phrases taken from the Vulgate and the Catholic liturgy as well as from classical texts, is woven through the texture of Mrs Curren’s consciousness: her mode of thought and expression tends to the etymological and the allusive. In this presentation I will consider the part these two discourses, classical and biblical, seemingly incompatible in some ways and overlapping in others, play in shaping the character of Mrs Curren. I will consider how the Latin language in her internal monologue and speech mediates her interactions with other characters and her reactions to particular events in the novel.

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Why is it important?

Although there has been a lot written about J.M. Coetzee's more recent European influences, there has been less emphasis on the place of classical cultures in his work. His novel, Age of Iron, has also received less critical attention than many of his novels.

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This page is a summary of: “Hades this place, and I a fugitive shade”: Classical Cultures and Languages in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron, English in Africa, June 2016, African Journals Online (AJOL),
DOI: 10.4314/eia.v43i1.5.
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