Sobriquet 41.19

The following post was originally published on 4/24/08

I'm not going to write much tonight. In fact, I'm just going to say thank you to Mike Kissack and Michael Titlestad of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg for having written an extremely readable, highly insightful essay on Disgrace. I want to thank them because I found the essay so readable that I finished today's workload much earlier than I had expected, leaving me with that ever-elusive free time I have been longing for. So, yeah, I got to play Sid Meier's Civilization without feeling guilty. 'Twas glorious.

Their essay, "Humility in a Godless World: Shame, Defiance and Dignity in Coetzee's Disgrace" is a wonderful example of what scholarly writing can and should be: a clear, concise, focused reading of a difficult text. The essay discusses the concept of a secular humility as a redemptive force in David Lurie's life, enabling the disgraced academic to achieve some measure of peace in his life. Although the essay is pretty solid all the way through, I found the discussion of the rift between David Lurie's secular conception of humility and Mr. Isaacs's Christian understanding of the concept especially interesting.

For tomorrow: Dissertate.

Work Cited:

Kissack, Mike and Michael Titlestad. "Humility in a Godless World: Shame, Defiance and Dignity in Coetzee's Disgrace." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 38.3 (2003): 135-147.