This project is structured around recent philosophical approaches to literary treatments of the self – discussions that reopen a dialogue with thinkers at the intersection of literature and philosophy dating back to Plato. In particular, the project brings together two essential features of these philosophical approaches: (i) a focus on the potential for the fragmentation of literary identity on the part of both the literary subject and the author who stands behind her, and (ii) the impact of style or form of linguistic composition on the successful communication of ethical thought in both literary and philosophical texts. The most relevant research premises are mainly applied to a study of the novelistic and critical output of the South-African novelist and Nobel Prize Winner, J.M. Coetzee.