Dread, Desire and Destruction: The Historical Sublime in Erwin Mortier’s Marcel (1999)

Mertens, Bram

Abstract

Erwin Mortier’s novel Marcel (1999) addresses the still controversial topic of the Flemish collaboration with the German occupier during the Second World War, and its subsequent repression by the Belgian state. Told from the perspective of a grandchild of the guilty generation, Mortier’s novel has often been read as a narrative of emerging understanding and reconciliation. Seen through the prism of Amy Elias’s concept of the historical sublime, the novel in fact suggests that the truth about the past remains inaccessible, even as the child protagonist is driven by a powerful desire to unveil it. Through the use of extended metaphors of signification, concealment and revelation, working in tandem with a narrative of a frequently disturbing sexual awakening, Marcel presents the urge to unveil the truth in and of history as a blind and desperate quest that is doomed to destroy the object of its desire.

Citation

Mertens, B. (2020). Dread, Desire and Destruction: The Historical Sublime in Erwin Mortier’s Marcel (1999). Journal of Modern Literature, 44(1), 165-182. https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.44.1.10

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 13, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Oct 1, 2020
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jun 19, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 2, 2022
• Print ISSN: 0022-281X
• Electronic ISSN: 1529-1464
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 44
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 165-182
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.44.1.10
• Keywords: Flemish Literature, Historical Novel, Second World War, Postmodernism
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2209914