柯慈是一位著名的後現代主義、後結構主義以及後殖民文學中的重要南非作家。柯慈的著作多從種族衝突、性別不平等、南非後種族隔離時期的政治議題以及動物權利等觀點被學者們廣泛研究及討論。此外，柯慈的著作備受現代以及後現代文學作家的著作影響，因此時常能在柯慈的著作當中看見薩謬爾•貝克特、T.S.艾略特以及法蘭茲•卡夫卡的寫作風格融貫在其著作當中。柯慈在後現代及現代文學家的啟蒙下, 後現代寫作所關切的議題像是語言的不確定性、文本下的多重哲學意義以及內在自我的可靠性等等都是柯慈寫作時主要關心的寫作方式。
丹麥哲學家齊克果之所以被大家公認為存在主義之父, 是因齊克果將他的哲學環繞著個人的存在問題延伸出齊克果獨有的個體存在論述，他同時反對當時知名哲學前輩黑格爾將個體視為國家、社會、群體甚至家庭的一部分。齊克果認為對人類來說真正重要的是找到真實的自我以及對基督教真切的信仰，並且更進一步指出，所有人在找到真實的自我及信仰之前都是處於不同的程度的絕望當中，而絕望正是人類精神的疾病。我相信齊克果的哲學能有效分析文學作品中的人物，例如：柯慈作品「恥」中的主角大衛盧里。本篇論文旨在連結柯慈的文學作品與齊克果哲學，並透過齊克果的哲學探討分析柯慈著作的男主角大衛•盧里這個角色在故事中的人格特質及轉變。本篇論文第一章為論文的簡介說明本論文的研究方法、文獻分析、研究目的。第二章為柯慈的自傳及寫作背景，主要提及柯慈的文學語言及其研究方法，而這些研究方法將在第四章分析的部分被證實及使用。第三章，詳述齊克果的三大哲學哲學概念，這些哲學觀點也將使用在第四章的分析。第四章以第二、三章為知識背景，進而以大衛作為研究對象。第五章為本篇論文做回顧及強調本篇論文的論點。

John Maxwell Coetzee (J.M. Coetzee) is well known as a writer associated with postcolonial literature, postmodernism and poststructuralism. Coetzee’s writings have been widely studied from the perspective of racial conflict, gender inequality, political issues in the context of the history in post-apartheid South Africa and animal rights. Additionally, Coetzee’s works are deeply indebted to postmodernist and modernist writers such as Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot and Franz Kafka. Inspired by postmodernist and modernist visions, Coetzee often concerns himself with postmodern issues such as the indeterminacy of language, the multiple philosophical meanings underlying the text or the reliability of the self.
Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, is thought of as the father of Existentialism. His philosophy is well known for emphasizing the existence of the single individual and questioning Hegel’s notion of the individual as a component of the family, community, society and the State. For Kierkegaard, what matters in life is finding the authentic self and ultimately approaching Christian faith. He indicates the fact that, to a certain degree, all human beings are in a state of despair, which is not a psychological state but rather represents a sickness of the spirit, namely the sickness of the self. I believe that Kierkegaardian philosophy can function as a useful lens for analyzing highly sophisticated, but morally flawed, literary characters. Such a character is David, the main protagonist of J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace.
This dissertation brings Coetzee’s work and Kierkegaard’s philosophy together by approaching Disgrace (2003), through the lens of Kierkegaard’s philosophy, with a focus on the novel’s main character, David Lurie. My thesis is divided into five chapters. In Chapter One, I offer an introduction, and discuss aspects related to my research motivation and research methodology, while also offering a short literature review. Chapter Two is dedicated to J.M. Coetzee’s literary biography, revealing mostly language-related approaches that will be shown to be of significance in the analytical section (Chapter 4). Chapter Three discusses three main notions of Kierkegaard’s, i.e. despair, the three life stages and the self. Chapter Four uses these concepts in an analysis of David Lurie through Kierkegaard’s perspective and in line with findings in Chapter 2. Chapter Five reviews and strengthens the main points articulated in this thesis.

Attwell, David. J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face-to-face with Time. New York: Penguin, 2016.
Backhouse, Stephen. Kierkegaard a Single Life. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016.
Beard, Margot. “Lessons from the Dead Master: Wordsworth and Byron in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” English in Africa, vol. 34, no. 1 (2007): 59-77.
Carlisle, Clare. Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard. London: Penguin, 2019.
Cass, Jeffrey. “Rape as Debt: The Incineration of Romanticism in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” CEA Critic, vol. 75, no.1 (2013): 36-43.
Coetzee, J.M., and David Attwell. Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. London: Vintage, 2000.
Coetzee, J.M. Elizabeth Costello. London: Vintage Digital, 2003.
Coetzee, J.M. Boyhood. London: Vintage, 1998.
Coetzee, J.M. Youth. London: Vintage, 2003.
Coetzee Papers, Summertime, 18 March 2005.
Dooley, Gillian. J.M. Coetzee and Power of Narrative. New York: Cambria Press, 2010.
Davenport, John J. “Selfhood and ‘Spirit’.” In The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, edited by John Lippitt and George Pattison, 230-251. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
DelConte, Matthew. “A Further Study of Present Tense Narration: The Absentee and Four-Wall Present Tense in Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarian” and “Disgrace.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 37, no. 3, (2007): 427-446.
Evans, C. Stephen. Kierkegaard: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Evans, C. Stephen. Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self. Texas: Baylor University Press, 2006.
Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2014.
Forms, Borrowed. “Opera and the Limits of Representation in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” In The Music and Ethics of Transnational Fiction, edited by Kathryn Lachman, 113-135. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014.
Gupta, Anoop. Kierkegaard’s Romantic Legacy: Two Theories of the Self. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1969.
Grunthaler, A.J. “Kierkegaard’s Concept of Despair.” www.sophia-project.org/uploads/1/3/9/5/13955288/grunthaler_despair.pdf
Hannay, Alastair. “Kierkegaard’s Single Individual and the Point of Indirect Communication.” In The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, edited by Steven Crowell, 71-95. Cambridge：Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1962.
Kannemeyer, J.C. J.M. Coetzee: A Life in Writing. London: Scribe, 2012.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Translated by David Wyllie. https://www.kafka-online.info/the-trial-page152.html
Kellman, Steven G. “J.M. Coetzee and Samuel Beckett: The Translingual Link.” Comparative Literature Studies 33, no. 2 (1996): 161-172.
Kemp, Ryan. “A the Aesthete: Aestheticism and the Limits of Philosophy.” In Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms, edited by Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart, 1-25. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye. The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye. Either/or: A Fragment of Life. Translated by Alastair Hannay. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Kundera, Milan. The Art of the Novel. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
Lowrie, Walter. “Existence as Understood by Kierkegaard and Sartre.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 58, no. 3 (1950): 379-401.
Mardorossian, Carine M. “Rape and the Violence of Representation in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 42, no. 4 (2011): 72-83.
McDunnah, Michael G. “We Are Not Asked to Condemn: Sympathy, Subjectivity, and the Narration of Disgrace.” In Encountering Disgrace: Reading and Teaching Coetzee’s Novel, edited by Bill McDonald, 15-47. New York: Camden House, 2009.
Mehigan, Tim. A Companion to the Works of J.M. Coetzee. New York: Camden House, 2011.
Merivale, Patricia. “Audible Palimpsests: Coetzee’s Kafka.” In Critical Perspectives on J.M. Coetzee, edited by Grahm Huggan and Stephen Watson, 152-167. London: Macmillan Press, 1996.
Mullan, John. How Novels Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Murphet, Julian. “Coetzee and Late Style: Exile within the Form.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 57, no. 1 (2011): 86-104.
Neimneh, Shadi. “The Visceral Allegory of Waiting for ‘The Barbarians’: A Postmodern Re-reading of J. M. Coetzee's Apartheid Novels.” Callaloo, vol. 37, no. 3 (2014): 692-709.
Northover, Richard Alan. “Elizabeth Costello as a Socratic Figure.” English in Africa 39, no. 1 (2012): 37-55.
Papadimos, T, and A Marco. “Kierkegaard, Despair, Society and the Medically Needy.” The Internet Journal of Law, Health Care and Ethics 3 (2004): 1-8.
Robinson, Dave, and Oscar Zarate. Introducing Kierkegaard. London: Icon Books, 2003.
Sévry, Jean. “An Interview with J.M. Coetzee.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 8 (1985): 2.
Silvani, Roman. Political Bodies and the Body Politic in J.M. Coetzee’s Novels. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012.
Sutcliffe, Patricia Casey. “Saying it Right in Disgrace: David Lurie, Faust, and the Romantic Conception of Language.” In Encountering Disgrace: Reading and Teaching Coetzee’s Novel, edited by Bill McDonald, 173-201. New York: Camden House, 2009.
Scott, Joanna. “Voice and Trajectory: An Interview with J.M. Coetzee.” Salmagundi, no. 114-115 (1997): 82-102.
Taylor, Mark C. Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and Self. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Taylor, Mark C. “Natural Selfhood and Ethical Selfhood in Kierkegaard.” In Soren Kierkegaard, edited by Harold Bloom, 171-189. New York: Chelsea House Publisher, 1989.
Vlies, Andrew Van Der. J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010.
Wahl, Jean. A Short History of Existentialism. Translated by Forrest Williams and Stanley Maron. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1971.
Wicks, Robert L. Introduction to Existentialism: From Kierkegaard to The Seventh Seal. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.