The “sympathetic imagination” — the ability to recognize, relate to, and enter the subjective experience of another being — is of the greatest importance in the work of J. M. Coetzee. Long before the term appears in Elizabeth Costello we see this capacity — or lack thereof — as a central issue in many of his books, from the demonizing of the nomads in Waiting for the Barbarians, through the developing sympathies of Mrs. Curran in Age of Iron, and even in Coetzee's own childhood as represented in Boyhood and Youth. But nowhere, arguably, does he deal with the issue as directly as in Disgrace.

The challenge is made explicit early in the novel as David Lurie lectures his students on the characterization of Lucifer in Byron's poem “Lara.” Already a self-consciously Byronic and Luciferian character, Lurie delivers this talk during his own fall from grace, at the moment when his private transgressions first flare into public scandal.