Anti-Saints: The New Golden Legend

摘要

"Lives of the Saints," or hagiography, was once a robust literary genre unto itself, and a highly respectable one at that. Today it is the opposite of intellectually respectable. The cultural distance reflected in the opposing valuations of hagiography makes it difficult for modern readers to fully appreciate Sylvain Marechal's parodic treatment of the genre in Nouvelle legende doree, the work that Sheila Delany has wonderfully brought back to life in English under the title Anti-Saints. The first difficulty is understanding why Marechal found it necessary to poke fun at writings that today appear so absurd as to constitute self-parodies.