Abstract
Walker Percy’s novel Lancelot pushes the reader to recognize that confession of sin requires confession of God and that the human self can best be understood as not only dialogic but Trinitarian. Percy’s mad confessant is unable to construct his self-defining narrative without the audience provided by his boyhood friend, now a priest. Lance’s confession fails when he is unable to discover true evil, the “Unholy Grail” that alone would make guilt a possibility. Yet the priest’s imminent testimony at the end of the novel indicates that Lance is prepared to hear the declaration of praise that will place evil in its true light as the dark thing that the love of the good God has forbidden. This will in turn open the door to a sacramental confession promising forgiveness and self-knowledge as an antidote to sin.
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Sykes, J.D. (2018). Lancelot: Dialogic Consciousness and the Triadic Self. In: God and Self in the Confessional Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91322-3_5
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