Between Novelistic Distance and Committed Actualization: Reconfigurations of the Judas conspiracy in Maryse Condé’s L’Évangile du nouveau monde

This sociopoetical study analyzes the fictional transcription of the Judas conspiracy motive in Maryse Condé’s L’Évangile du nouveau monde (2021). It aims to describe and question the novelistic reconfigurations of the original conspiracy myth in a recent Francophone Caribbean work, by measuring the constants and variants underlying the palimpsest of the pericope. To this end, a comparison of the novel’s diegesis with the chronological strata of the New Testament reveals the biblical lineaments that run through the conspiracy narrative, and sheds light on the forms, modalities and issues of the intertextual games played by an author renowned for her civic commitment.