Different returns of the prodigal son: from parable to novel

Abstract

Based on a comparative analysis of a biblical text and two literary narratives, The parable of the prodigal son, by Luke, Le retour de l’enfant prodigue, by André Gide, and Lavoura arcaica, by Raduan Nassar, this paper aims to comment on two Aesthetics which pertain to the beginning of the 20th century and to the 1970s based on different intertextual relations. Both literary writers use other texts as the initial motive for their narratives, producing an extradiegetic discussion about the intertextual dialogue which reveals two historically dated forms to conceive literature in its representation of the world. The aim of this paper is to explore the aesthetics of Gide and Nassar: one relates to the modernist code and the other is seen as either the movement’s refusal or its continuity or its intensification or, finally, as the explosion and the end of modernism, which is the post-modernist aesthetic.