Author: Gilles Boileau, Tamkang University, Taiwan
Email: boileau@mail.tku.edu.tw
Published: July 27, 2020
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijl.9.1.02
Citation: Boileau, G. (2020). Wrestling with the Angel: Maurice Dantec, God, and Deleuze. IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.22492/ijl.9.1.02
Abstract
Maurice Dantec (1959-2016), Canadian-French novelist, was a cyberpunk author with a strong interest in Science, Christian theology and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). He married those sources in his novels and his literary journals. This article analyzes the interplay of religious, scientific and Deleuzian imagery, guided by the figure of angels. I begin with a study of Dantec’s stylistic characteristics, his journey toward Catholic orthodoxy and his apocalyptic understanding of our world. It is in one of his novel, Cosmos Incorporated, published in 2006, that Dantec’s recipe coalesced in the most brilliant manner. The last part of this article is centered on a long passage from this novel, describing a struggle between Good and Evil, where all the intellectual resources and philosophical and theological references of the author are mobilized.
Keywords
Dantec, Deleuze, angels, sci-fi, theology