Scénarios d’aveuglement dans la littérature d’Orhan Pamuk, d’Ernesto Sábato, et de José Saramago analyse trois œuvres importantes de trois auteurs contemporains : Mon nom est Rouge d’Orhan Pamuk ; « Rapport sur les aveugles » du roman Héros et tombes d’Ernesto Sábato ; et L’aveuglement de José Saramago. Malgré leurs différences, ces romans ont des points communs évidents, synthétisés dans la figure de l’aveuglement. Cette figure signale l’avènement, dans les textes, d’un régime de connaissance alternatif, centré moins sur le primat de la raison et du visuel que sur une nouvelle capacité cognitive, basée sur une logique spéciale du destin. L’aveuglement s’ouvre également sur une nouvelle compréhension de l’histoire, grâce à une capacité du récit de fiction qui passe par le point de fuite de la cécité. Pour Pamuk, l’aveuglement est le couronnement paradoxal d’une vision du monde, gravement mise en crise à la fin du XVIe siècle par le perspectivisme et le réalisme de la Renaissance, la voie d’entrée vers un monde imaginal qui n’est plus accessible à l’imaginaire occidental. Pour Sábato, il représente la variante renversée d’une quête de l’absolu qui passe par les antres de l’inceste, de l’enfer et du crime, tandis que le monde décrit par Saramago est un monde qui sombre sur la pente de la déchéance, en suivant une logique implacable. Il est l’équivalent de plusieurs formes de cécité qui menacent le monde contemporain, comme le fondamentalisme religieux, l’homogénéité préconisée par la société de masse, l’exclusion raciale, l’oppression idéologique. La thèse se divise en trois parties, La violente beauté du monde, Un mythe hérétique de la caverne et Une épidémie à cause inconnue, chacune d’entre elles analysant l’œuvre d’un auteur, mais établissant également des liens avec les autres chapitres. L’approche adoptée est interdisciplinaire, un croisement entre études littéraires, philosophie et histoire de l’art. Dans leur quête de nouveaux concepts et de nouvelles formes de pensée qui s’écartent du modèle rationnel dominant de la modernité, les trois auteurs partent de la présupposition que regarder les choses n’est pas du tout l’équivalent de voir les choses. Ils tentent d’articuler une logique du voir qui ressemble plutôt à la vision et à la clairvoyance qu’à la conformité logique. La figure de l’aveuglement sert de tremplin vers le monde imaginal (Pamuk), la pensée magique (Sábato) et la vision dystopique (Saramago) – des espaces ontologiquement différents où les auteurs mènent leurs attaques contre la rationnalité à tout prix. C’est précisément ces espaces que nous avons choisi d’explorer dans les trois romans. Nous soutenons également que ces trois textes proposent un nouveau régime de « connaissance » qui met en question les règles de pensée héritées de la Renaissance et surtout des Lumières, qui constituent un discours dominant dans la culture visuelle et philosophique moderne. / Blindness in the Literature of Orhan Pamuk, Ernesto Sábato, José Saramago examines three important texts by three well-known contemporary authors: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk; the chapter « Report on the Blind » from the novel On Heroes and Tombs by Ernesto Sábato; and Blindness by José Saramago. The trope of blindness is a common theme in these novels, despite their significant differences. Blindness introduces an alternative regime of knowledge, centered less on the primacy of the rational and the visual than on a new cognitive capacity, grounded in a specific logic of destiny. It proposes new understandings of history, due to a fictionalizing capacity, which passes through the fault lines of blindness. For Pamuk, blindness represents the paradoxical culmination of a traditional, Islamic world view, which was challenged in the 16th century by the perspectivism and the realism of Renaissance. This conception is regarded as the royal road to an imaginal world that remains inaccessible to the western imaginary. In Sábato’s novel, blindness prompts the reversed version of a quest for absolute, which passes through incest, hell and crime. In the dystopic world depicted by Saramago, this trope is symptomatic of a continuous decay, which follows an implacable logic. It also points to the many forms of blindness that threaten the contemporary world, such as religious fundamentalism, the leveling produced by mass culture and mass society, racial exclusion, ideological oppression. The thesis is divided in three chapters: The Violent Beauty of the World, A Heretical Myth of the Cave and An Epidemic with an Unknown Reason. Each chapter examines one of the three novels, but connections and cross-links among the individual chapters are also established. My investigation provides an interdisciplinary approach, which relies on paradigms from literary studies, philosophy and art history. All three authors examined in the dissertation start from the assumption that looking is not equivalent to seeing. Their texts attempt to formulate a logic of seeing indebted to vision rather than to logical accuracy. The figure of blindness serves as a springboard towards the imaginal world (Pamuk), magical thought (Sábato) and dystopia (Saramago) – ontologically different spaces where the authors counter rationality with new modes of vision. The dissertation explores the articulation of these spaces in the three novels. It argues that these texts on blindness propose a regime of « knowledge » that challenges the dominant discourses on vision, rationality, and the mind – the legacy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment – in modern visual culture and modern philosophy.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:58:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao protegida.pdf: 485470 bytes, checksum: 735f19742a5105b8edf06e0232846991 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-06-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The objective of this work is to study the myth of the double as character in the novel The Double, of Jose Saramago, published in 2002. To explain the form of this myth in the Contemporarity we cover the trajectory of the myth since the sprouting of the reason and the conscience of itself in the beginning of the man. As hypothesis, we understand the myth of the double as non-separable part of the nature human being who will follow the evolution of the artistic phenomena, since the first representations in the walls of the caves until the fragmentary art contemporary, being its literary construction impregnated by the historical and social-cultural modifications, transforming the literary language into instrument of critical and metalanguage. To justify the study of the myth to be the primordial form of narration, oral in principle, suffering to a mutation to be registered for the writing, losing the sacred character and acquiring literary contours. It is in this aspect that we observe the transformation of the myth, more specifically, from the work of Edgar Allan Poe, the short story William Wilson, chosen for its importance in the formatting of a double modern, fruit of a society that entries for the Modern Age for the Industrial Revolution and its consequences, such as the growth of the cities and the massification of the population; until the romance The Double, presenting a double in search of an identity that if presents unstable. Analyzing the double while character, we verify the influences of the historical and social-cultural factors in its composition, beyond its relation with the author and the narrator of the literary text, the some voices that if face in the narrative and propitiate to look at intent disclosing the double that if it projects in these relations and it constructs a multifaceted text / O objetivo desse trabalho é estudar o mito do duplo como personagem na obra O homem duplicado, de José Saramago, publicada em 2002. Para entender a forma desse mito na contemporaneidade percorremos sua trajetória desde o surgimento da razão e da consciência de si nos primórdios do homem. Como hipótese, entendemos o mito do duplo como parte inseparável da natureza humana que acompanhará a evolução dos fenômenos artísticos, desde as primeiras representações nas paredes das cavernas até a fragmentária arte contemporânea, sendo sua construção literária impregnada pelas modificações históricas e sócio-culturais, transformando a linguagem literária em instrumento de crítica e de metalinguagem. Justifica-se o estudo do mito por ser essa a forma primordial de narração, a princípio oral, sofrendo uma mutação ao ser registrado pela escrita, perdendo o caráter sagrado e adquirindo contornos literários. É nesse aspecto que observamos a transformação do mito do duplo, mais especificamente a partir da obra de Edgar Allan Poe, o conto William Wilson, escolhido pela sua importância na formatação de um duplo moderno, fruto de uma sociedade que adentra a Era Moderna pela Revolução Industrial e suas conseqüências, tais como o crescimento das cidades e a massificação da população; até o romance O homem duplicado, apresentando um duplo em busca de uma identidade que se apresenta instável. Analisando o duplo enquanto personagem, verificamos as influências dos fatores históricos e sócio-culturais na sua composição, além de sua relação com o autor e o narrador do texto literário, as várias vozes que se enfrentam na narrativa e propiciam um olhar atento revelando o duplo que se projeta nessas relações e constrói um texto multifacetado

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:59:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Debora Rodrigues de Miranda.pdf: 609895 bytes, checksum: cd742246d2dfd61682877964fed67997 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-30 / This study aims to elucidate how the chroniclistic text play its role in the novel Risen from the Ground by José Saramago. A hybrid kind of novel, it presents the historical course of the Portuguese people by means of saga, myth and orality traits found in the histories of poor peasants from the Alentejan great landed states. To create Fiction as History, the novel s narrator records the ordinary dealings of the Bad-Weather family a forerunner of effective Portuguese mentality changes along three generations. By following the characters trajectory it is possible to make sense of the novelistic universe composed of small passages that give the significance of the whole work. With this study, we hope to contribute not only to studies on Saramago s chronicles, but also to researches focused on literary works with historical content, and on the understanding of novel as a literary genre / O presente estudo tem por objetivo elucidar o modo como o texto cronístico participa na estrutura do romance Levantado do Chão, de José Saramago. Romance de caráter híbrido, apresenta o percurso histórico do povo português por meio da saga, do mito e dos traços de oralidade presentes nas histórias dos homens simples do latifúndio alentejano. Para criar a Ficção como História, o narrador do romance registra o dia a dia da família Mau-Tempo precursora de efetivas mudanças da mentalidade portuguesa ao longo de três gerações. Acompanhando-se o percurso das personagens, é possível apreender o universo romanesco formado por pequenas passagens que garantem toda a significação da obra. Por meio desse trabalho, espera-se contribuir não só com os estudos sobre as crônicas saramaguianas, mas também com as pesquisas voltadas às produções literárias de teor histórico e a compreensão do gênero romanesco

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-14T13:39:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 460557.pdf: 1839798 bytes, checksum: 4d9851d6ef5817f9ab62d6205b1f05c1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-26 / This thesis aims at investigating the fictionalization of death in four contemporary Portuguese novels : Apari??o, by Verg?lio Ferreira; Louren?o ? nome de jogral, by Fernanda Botelho; O triunfo da morte, by Augusto Abelaira; and As intermit?ncias da morte de Jos? Saramago. These novels were analyzed according to the concept of death proposed by the philosophical studies of Martin Heiddeger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edgar Morin, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard and Maurice Blanchot among others, as well as mythic, iconographic and historical aspects of the representation of death according to the studies of Phillipe Ari?s and Johan Huizinga. Some theories of Narratology were also used in order to understand the complex relation and representation of death in Literature. / O presente estudo investiga a ficcionaliza??o da morte em quatro romances da literatura portuguesa contempor?nea. S?o essas obras Apari??o de Verg?lio Ferreira, Louren?o ? nome de jogral de Fernanda Botelho, O triunfo da morte de Augusto Abelaira e As intermit?ncias da morte de Jos? Saramago. Para o estudo e an?lise dessas obras desenvolveu-se pesquisa em torno do conceito de morte estabelecido pela filosofia contempor?nea, atrav?s das teorias de Martin Heiddeger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edgar Morin, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, Maurice Blanchot entre outros; assim como aspectos m?ticos, iconogr?ficos e hist?ricos da representa??o da morte a partir dos estudos de Phillipe Ari?s e Johan Huizinga. Associamos a esse material filos?fico e hist?rico conhecimentos da narratologia que nos permitiram entender a complexa rela??o e representa??o da morte no ?mbito da literatura.

Scénarios d’aveuglement dans la littérature d’Orhan Pamuk, d’Ernesto Sábato, et de José Saramago analyse trois œuvres importantes de trois auteurs contemporains : Mon nom est Rouge d’Orhan Pamuk ; « Rapport sur les aveugles » du roman Héros et tombes d’Ernesto Sábato ; et L’aveuglement de José Saramago. Malgré leurs différences, ces romans ont des points communs évidents, synthétisés dans la figure de l’aveuglement. Cette figure signale l’avènement, dans les textes, d’un régime de connaissance alternatif, centré moins sur le primat de la raison et du visuel que sur une nouvelle capacité cognitive, basée sur une logique spéciale du destin. L’aveuglement s’ouvre également sur une nouvelle compréhension de l’histoire, grâce à une capacité du récit de fiction qui passe par le point de fuite de la cécité. Pour Pamuk, l’aveuglement est le couronnement paradoxal d’une vision du monde, gravement mise en crise à la fin du XVIe siècle par le perspectivisme et le réalisme de la Renaissance, la voie d’entrée vers un monde imaginal qui n’est plus accessible à l’imaginaire occidental. Pour Sábato, il représente la variante renversée d’une quête de l’absolu qui passe par les antres de l’inceste, de l’enfer et du crime, tandis que le monde décrit par Saramago est un monde qui sombre sur la pente de la déchéance, en suivant une logique implacable. Il est l’équivalent de plusieurs formes de cécité qui menacent le monde contemporain, comme le fondamentalisme religieux, l’homogénéité préconisée par la société de masse, l’exclusion raciale, l’oppression idéologique. La thèse se divise en trois parties, La violente beauté du monde, Un mythe hérétique de la caverne et Une épidémie à cause inconnue, chacune d’entre elles analysant l’œuvre d’un auteur, mais établissant également des liens avec les autres chapitres. L’approche adoptée est interdisciplinaire, un croisement entre études littéraires, philosophie et histoire de l’art. Dans leur quête de nouveaux concepts et de nouvelles formes de pensée qui s’écartent du modèle rationnel dominant de la modernité, les trois auteurs partent de la présupposition que regarder les choses n’est pas du tout l’équivalent de voir les choses. Ils tentent d’articuler une logique du voir qui ressemble plutôt à la vision et à la clairvoyance qu’à la conformité logique. La figure de l’aveuglement sert de tremplin vers le monde imaginal (Pamuk), la pensée magique (Sábato) et la vision dystopique (Saramago) – des espaces ontologiquement différents où les auteurs mènent leurs attaques contre la rationnalité à tout prix. C’est précisément ces espaces que nous avons choisi d’explorer dans les trois romans. Nous soutenons également que ces trois textes proposent un nouveau régime de « connaissance » qui met en question les règles de pensée héritées de la Renaissance et surtout des Lumières, qui constituent un discours dominant dans la culture visuelle et philosophique moderne. / Blindness in the Literature of Orhan Pamuk, Ernesto Sábato, José Saramago examines three important texts by three well-known contemporary authors: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk; the chapter « Report on the Blind » from the novel On Heroes and Tombs by Ernesto Sábato; and Blindness by José Saramago. The trope of blindness is a common theme in these novels, despite their significant differences. Blindness introduces an alternative regime of knowledge, centered less on the primacy of the rational and the visual than on a new cognitive capacity, grounded in a specific logic of destiny. It proposes new understandings of history, due to a fictionalizing capacity, which passes through the fault lines of blindness. For Pamuk, blindness represents the paradoxical culmination of a traditional, Islamic world view, which was challenged in the 16th century by the perspectivism and the realism of Renaissance. This conception is regarded as the royal road to an imaginal world that remains inaccessible to the western imaginary. In Sábato’s novel, blindness prompts the reversed version of a quest for absolute, which passes through incest, hell and crime. In the dystopic world depicted by Saramago, this trope is symptomatic of a continuous decay, which follows an implacable logic. It also points to the many forms of blindness that threaten the contemporary world, such as religious fundamentalism, the leveling produced by mass culture and mass society, racial exclusion, ideological oppression. The thesis is divided in three chapters: The Violent Beauty of the World, A Heretical Myth of the Cave and An Epidemic with an Unknown Reason. Each chapter examines one of the three novels, but connections and cross-links among the individual chapters are also established. My investigation provides an interdisciplinary approach, which relies on paradigms from literary studies, philosophy and art history. All three authors examined in the dissertation start from the assumption that looking is not equivalent to seeing. Their texts attempt to formulate a logic of seeing indebted to vision rather than to logical accuracy. The figure of blindness serves as a springboard towards the imaginal world (Pamuk), magical thought (Sábato) and dystopia (Saramago) – ontologically different spaces where the authors counter rationality with new modes of vision. The dissertation explores the articulation of these spaces in the three novels. It argues that these texts on blindness propose a regime of « knowledge » that challenges the dominant discourses on vision, rationality, and the mind – the legacy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment – in modern visual culture and modern philosophy.

Este estudo investiga a personificação da morte como um dos grandes elementos de ruptura entre a literatura portuguesa tradicional e a contemporânea e como subsídio para reflexão acerca da realidade pós-moderna portuguesa. Diante de uma tradição estagnada em torno do lirismo, surgem produções artísticas que buscaram matéria literária no imaginário europeu para desenvolver uma literatura de cunho crítico. A importância do imaginário da morte medieval como referência cultural é comprovada através da gama de iconografias e de textos escritos encontrados ao longo dos tempos, inclusive na contemporaneidade e na preservação de festas populares ainda no século 21. Seguindo essa tendência, a personificação da morte é o elemento central desenvolvido no romance de José Saramago As intermitências da morte, e de Augusto Abelaira O triunfo da morte, literatura pós-74, como via para renovação literária e exercício crítico da sociedade. Também é através da figura da morte que são desenvolvidos três conceitos pós-modernos: ruptura entre ficção e realidade, paródia e ironia. Essas abordagens são trabalhadas a partir da teoria de Käte Hamburger e Linda Hutcheon, entre outros, em função da possibilidade de unir o tema da morte e a teoria pós-moderna no percurso teórico específico definido neste estudo. / This study investigates the death personification as one of the great elements of rupture between the Portuguese Traditional Literature and the Contemporary Literature as a subsidy for reflection on the Portuguese post-modern reality. Facing a stagnant tradition around the lyric, artistic productions appear which searched literary subject from the European imaginary to develop a literature on a critical way. The importance of the imaginary of medieval death as a cultural reference is proved through a great deal of iconographies and from written texts found along the ages also in the contemporaneity and in the preservation of popular parties and feasts still in the 21st century. Following this tendency, the death personification is the central element developed in the novel by José Saramago As intermitências da morte, and by Augusto Abelaira O Triunfo da morte, literature post-74, seen as a way to literature renovation as well as a critical society exercise. It is also through the death figure that three post-modern concepts are developed: rupture between fiction and reality, parody and irony. These approaches are worked and developed from the theory by Käte Hamburger and Linda Hutcheon, among others, because of the possibility of uniting the death theme and the post-modern theory on the theory specific course defined in this study.

Este estudo investiga a personificação da morte como um dos grandes elementos de ruptura entre a literatura portuguesa tradicional e a contemporânea e como subsídio para reflexão acerca da realidade pós-moderna portuguesa. Diante de uma tradição estagnada em torno do lirismo, surgem produções artísticas que buscaram matéria literária no imaginário europeu para desenvolver uma literatura de cunho crítico. A importância do imaginário da morte medieval como referência cultural é comprovada através da gama de iconografias e de textos escritos encontrados ao longo dos tempos, inclusive na contemporaneidade e na preservação de festas populares ainda no século 21. Seguindo essa tendência, a personificação da morte é o elemento central desenvolvido no romance de José Saramago As intermitências da morte, e de Augusto Abelaira O triunfo da morte, literatura pós-74, como via para renovação literária e exercício crítico da sociedade. Também é através da figura da morte que são desenvolvidos três conceitos pós-modernos: ruptura entre ficção e realidade, paródia e ironia. Essas abordagens são trabalhadas a partir da teoria de Käte Hamburger e Linda Hutcheon, entre outros, em função da possibilidade de unir o tema da morte e a teoria pós-moderna no percurso teórico específico definido neste estudo. / This study investigates the death personification as one of the great elements of rupture between the Portuguese Traditional Literature and the Contemporary Literature as a subsidy for reflection on the Portuguese post-modern reality. Facing a stagnant tradition around the lyric, artistic productions appear which searched literary subject from the European imaginary to develop a literature on a critical way. The importance of the imaginary of medieval death as a cultural reference is proved through a great deal of iconographies and from written texts found along the ages also in the contemporaneity and in the preservation of popular parties and feasts still in the 21st century. Following this tendency, the death personification is the central element developed in the novel by José Saramago As intermitências da morte, and by Augusto Abelaira O Triunfo da morte, literature post-74, seen as a way to literature renovation as well as a critical society exercise. It is also through the death figure that three post-modern concepts are developed: rupture between fiction and reality, parody and irony. These approaches are worked and developed from the theory by Käte Hamburger and Linda Hutcheon, among others, because of the possibility of uniting the death theme and the post-modern theory on the theory specific course defined in this study.

Este estudo investiga a personificação da morte como um dos grandes elementos de ruptura entre a literatura portuguesa tradicional e a contemporânea e como subsídio para reflexão acerca da realidade pós-moderna portuguesa. Diante de uma tradição estagnada em torno do lirismo, surgem produções artísticas que buscaram matéria literária no imaginário europeu para desenvolver uma literatura de cunho crítico. A importância do imaginário da morte medieval como referência cultural é comprovada através da gama de iconografias e de textos escritos encontrados ao longo dos tempos, inclusive na contemporaneidade e na preservação de festas populares ainda no século 21. Seguindo essa tendência, a personificação da morte é o elemento central desenvolvido no romance de José Saramago As intermitências da morte, e de Augusto Abelaira O triunfo da morte, literatura pós-74, como via para renovação literária e exercício crítico da sociedade. Também é através da figura da morte que são desenvolvidos três conceitos pós-modernos: ruptura entre ficção e realidade, paródia e ironia. Essas abordagens são trabalhadas a partir da teoria de Käte Hamburger e Linda Hutcheon, entre outros, em função da possibilidade de unir o tema da morte e a teoria pós-moderna no percurso teórico específico definido neste estudo. / This study investigates the death personification as one of the great elements of rupture between the Portuguese Traditional Literature and the Contemporary Literature as a subsidy for reflection on the Portuguese post-modern reality. Facing a stagnant tradition around the lyric, artistic productions appear which searched literary subject from the European imaginary to develop a literature on a critical way. The importance of the imaginary of medieval death as a cultural reference is proved through a great deal of iconographies and from written texts found along the ages also in the contemporaneity and in the preservation of popular parties and feasts still in the 21st century. Following this tendency, the death personification is the central element developed in the novel by José Saramago As intermitências da morte, and by Augusto Abelaira O Triunfo da morte, literature post-74, seen as a way to literature renovation as well as a critical society exercise. It is also through the death figure that three post-modern concepts are developed: rupture between fiction and reality, parody and irony. These approaches are worked and developed from the theory by Käte Hamburger and Linda Hutcheon, among others, because of the possibility of uniting the death theme and the post-modern theory on the theory specific course defined in this study.

It is intrinsic to modernity the expansion of the philosophical detachment from the religious view as critical reason takes place in science, art and the worldview of modern man. Through Kant's reflections, in The Religion within the limits of reason alone (1793), we will seek to understand this process of rupture between faith and reason which explains the prevailing thought in postmodernity. We chose the renowned writer, José Saramago, and his works of religious nature as our objects of study, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) and Cain (2009), as they represent, in the Portuguese language, the voice of the man who is still attracted by the literature of literatures – composed by the Pentateuch and the other canonical books. The author wishes to understand, question and to find the contradictions in believing in an absent, flawed and guilty God. Instigated by the importance in which the "Marys" are portrayed in the Apocryphal Gospels, and to further condemn this God, Saramago recreates in his parodies, a postmodern and anti-religious gospel whose eroticized reinvention of the biblical women - the "Marys", Eve and Lilith - results in the demystification and humanization of the characters and the destabilization of patriarchal discourse. Thus, before analyzing the creation of a new myth of women and their role in Saramago, we will study what was postulated by the feminist theorists, Simone de Beauvoir (2016) and Luce Irigaray (2017), which determine the place of the woman as the "Other", by an exclusionary monologic language that puts her at the service of the elaboration of the universalizing male, which also occurs in the saaramguian language.

Jesus' story has been retold in various forms and fashions for centuries. Jesus novels, a subset of the historical fiction genre, are one of the latest means of not only re-imagining the man from Galilee but also of rewriting the canonical Gospels. This thesis explores the Christological portraits constructed in four of those novels while also using the novels to examine the intertextual play of these Gospel rewrites with their Gospel progenitors. Chapter 1 offers a prolegomenon to the act of fictionalizing Jesus that discusses the relationship between the person and his portraits and the hermeneutical circle created by these texts as they both rewrite the Gospels and stimulate a rereading of them. It also establishes the "preposterous" methodology that will be used when reexamining the Gospels "post" reading the novels. Chapters 2 to 5 offer four case studies of "complementing" and "competing" novels and the techniques they use to achieve these aims: Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt; Neil Boyd's The Hidden Years; Nino Ricci's Testament; and José Saramago's The Gospel according to Jesus Christ. Chapter 6 begins an examination of a specific interpretive circle based upon Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Beginning with the synoptic accounts of that event, the chapter then turns to how Jesus' testing has been reinterpreted and presented in two of the novels. Returning to the Gospel of Matthew's version of the Temptation, chapter 7 offers a "preposterous" examination of that pericope, which asks novel questions of the text and its role with Matthew's narrative context based on issues raised by the Gospel rewrites. The thesis concludes by suggesting that Jesus novels, already important examples of the reception history of the Gospels, can also play a helpful role in re-interpreting the Gospels themselves.