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Ideas and embodied souls: Platonic and Christian intertexts in J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello and The Childhood of Jesus

Abstract Both J.M. Coetzee’s latest narrative work, The Childhood of Jesus, and his collection of fictionalised lectures Elizabeth Costello have been described as philosophical debates staged in fiction. Along with references to various novelistic traditions, these works do in fact display more or less explicit Platonic intertexts that criticism does not often take into account. Platonic dialogism intertwines blatantly with Christian references from the Gospels in The Childhood of Jesus; a closer look at Elizabeth Costello reveals similar features. The author’s analysis aims at exploring this intertextual intersection between novelistic traditions, Christian references and echoes of Plato from different theoretical points of view – most notably, recent ‘Bakhtinian’ developments in Plato studies.