Eros and Ethics in Martin A. Hansen’s Novel The Liar
Eros and Ethics in Martin A. Hansen’s Novel The Liar

Summary/Abstract: Seduction plays a dual role in Martin A. Hansen’s novel The Liar. Johannes Vig, the narrator/protagonist is prone to repeat a pattern of triangular erotic relationships while at the same time engaging in literary seduction. He hides and reveals the truth through a rhetoric of fiction that carries Kierkegaardian overtones. Johannes who is both teacher and preacher on an island off the mainland at some points approximates the Kierkegaardian category of the demonic, being afraid of opening up. Johannes is suffering from a Freudian compulsion to repeat threatening to bar him from the ethical metamorphosis that would absolve him. The repetitiveness of his sexuality paradoxically spurs on a search for truth and ethics as Johannes distances himself from the past in an attempt to transcend the barriers of dualism implicit in the past-present dichotomy.

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