Christian and Modernist Utopia in Coetzee’s Novels The Childhood of Jesus and Schooldays of Jesus

Abstract

This article addresses, in its first part, the many critics who have difficulty in making sense of Coetzee’s two novels The Childhood of Jesus and Schooldays of Jesus, offering clues for an understanding of Coetzee’s utopian thought experiment within the framework of Christian ideals. The second argument reconstructs Coetzee’s ironic musings about the future of the traditions of Western culture and art. Setting his fictional reflection in a utopian society which has achieved a truly equalitarian order, patterned on the ideals of Primitive Christianity and monastic humility, Coetzee explores the question whether in such a society there is still space and need for the arts, or if the success of our rational utopian endeavors will lead to the disappearance of art as we have known it for millennia.