La vie érémitique de sainte Marie-Madeleine dans le roman français contemporain: expiation ou méditation?

Abstract

Solitude is at the heart of Mary Magdalene's existence, as the disciple of Christ devotes the last thirty years of her life to a hermitic retreat. While tradition associates these three decades with either a long expiation or a serie of mystical experiences, we can observe, among several contemporary French novelists, a clear questioning of this ancient interpretation of Magdalene’s solitude. Certainly, sadness and introspection remain present, but more in the form of mourning and meditation than self-mortification. A meditation that sometimes materializes through the writing of a gospel. This new hermit Magdalene, closer to a Saint Jerome than a Saint Mary of Egypt, obviously does not emerge ex nihilo, and various societal elements, mainly the development of feminist theology, the publication of apocryphal gospels and a matriarchal reinterpretation of the Christic message, explain the evolution of literary representations of Magdalene’s solitude.