Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This study provides a broad-based introduction to Iris Murdoch's fiction which is discussed thematically in terms of her own recurrent interests and recent critical approaches to her work. An overview of current Murdoch scholarship, including an appraisal of biographical texts and memoirs, is followed by two chapters which explain first the ways in which Murdoch's moral philosophy interacts with her novels and then her 'neo-theology', which answers her fears about the loss of faith in the twentieth century. A short chapter on Murdoch's Irishness that questions her status as an 'Irish' writer follows. A section on Murdoch's experimentation with form explores her use of a variety of genres and assesses how her lifelong interest in painting, drama and poetry affects the form of her fiction. Finally, an assessment of the extent to which cultural, political and personal issues seep into the fiction is made with special reference to recently acquired letters to many friends and fellow philosophers.
Synopsis
Iris Murdoch was both a popular and intellectually serious novelist, whose writing life spanned the latter half of the twentieth century. A proudly Anglo-Irish writer who produced twenty-six best-selling novels, she was also a respected philosopher, a theological thinker and an outspoken
public intellectual. This thematically based study outlines the overarching themes that characterise her fiction decade by decade, explores her unique role as a British philosopher-novelist, explains the paradoxical nature of her outspoken atheism and highlights the neglected aesthetic aspect of her
fiction, which innovatively extended the boundaries of realist fiction. While Iris Murdoch is acknowledged here as a writer who vividly evokes the zeitgeist of the late twentieth century, she is also presented as a figure whose unconventional life and complex presentation of gender and psychology
has immense resonance for twenty-first-century readers.
Synopsis
Reviews
'Anne Rowe, a scrupulous Murdoch scholar of many years' standing, has written a slim but comprehensive overview of the writer's career, attending successively to aspects of her output in both genres, encompassing matters intellectual, spiritual, experiential and geographical.'
Stuart Walton, The London Magazine