Read complete books and articles on: Iris Murdoch

Murdoch, Dame Iris - (Dame Jean Iris Murdoch)mûrˈdŏk, 1919–99, British novelist and philosopher, b. Dublin, Ireland. In 1948 she was named lecturer in philosophy at Oxford, and in 1963 she was made an honorary fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. Murdoch's novels, subtle, witty, convoluted, puzzling, and often wildly comic, have elicited widely differing critical interpretations. Murdoch views human beings as "accidental" creatures, purportedly free but actually constricted by the boundaries of self, society, and the natural world. Although the plots of her novels are complex, involving innumerable characters in seemingly endless configurations and punctuated by extraordinary incidents, they often focus on one individual's recognition that free will and self-knowledge are illusory.

Among Murdoch's 26 novels are The Flight from the Enchanter (1956), The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), An Accidental Man (1972), The Sea, the Sea (1978; Booker Prize), Message to the Planet (1989), The Green Knight (1994), and Jackson's Dilemma (1995). Murdoch worked on dramatizations of two of her novels, A Severed Head (1963, with J. B. Priestley), and The Italian Girl (1967, with James Sanders), and she wrote several plays, including Art and Eros (1980). She also published Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953), The Sovereignty of Good (1971), The Fire and the Sun (1977), and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). In 1956 she married John Oliver Bayley, the novelist and critic who wrote movingly of her in Elegy for Iris (1998). She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987.

Bibliography

See biography by P. J. Conradi (2001); studies by A. S. Byatt (1965), P. Wolfe (1966), R. Rabinovitz (1968), D. Gerstenberger (1975), R. Todd (1979, 1988), E. Dipple (1982), A. Hague (1984), P. J. Conradi (1986), C. B. Bove (1986, 1993), D. Johnson (1987), R. C. Kane (1988), D. D. Mettler (1991), P. P. Punja (1993), D. J. Gordon (1995), B. S. Heusel (1995), and H. D. Spear (1995).

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15 of the Best Books and Articles on: Iris Murdoch

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch » Read Now
by Maria Antonaccio. 244 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library

Iris Murdoch has long been known as one of the most deeply insightful and morally passionate novelists of our time. This attention has often eclipsed Murdoch's sophisticated and influential work as a philosopher, which has had a wide-ranging impact on thinkers in moral philosophy as well as...
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Iris Murdoch has long been known as one of the most deeply insightful and morally passionate novelists of our time. This attention has often eclipsed Murdoch's sophisticated and influential work as a philosopher, which has had a wide-ranging impact on thinkers in moral philosophy as well as religious ethics and political theory. Yet it has never been the subject of a book-length study in its own right. Picturing the Human seeks to fill this gap. In this groundbreaking book, author Maria Antonaccio presents the first systematic and comprehensive treatment of Murdoch's moral philosophy. Unlike literary critical studies of her novels, it offers a general philosophical framework for assessing Murdoch's thought as a whole. Antonaccio also suggests a new interpretive method for reading Murdoch's philosophy and outlines the significance of her thought in the context of current debates in ethics. This vital study will appeal to those interested in moral philosophy, religious ethics, and literary criticism, and grants those who have long loved Murdoch's novels a closer look at her remarkable philosophy.
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2.

Freedom and the Will (Chap. 6 "Freedom and Knowledge") » Read Now
by D. F. Pears. 138 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

...EVENTS By G. J. WARNOCK, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. 69 6. FREEDOM AND KNOWLEDGE By IRIS MURDOCH, Lecturer, The Royal College of Art, London, S. N. HAMPSHIRE...
3.

Iris Murdoch and the Good Psychoanalyst, in Twentieth Century Literature » Read Now
by Jack Turner. 18 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Iris Murdoch and the good psychoanalyst by...McCaskerville, the Scottish psychoanalyst in Iris Murdochs The Good Apprentice (1985), is meticulously...Biles, Jack I. "An...
4.

Death and Love in Iris Murdoch's the Time of the Angels, in Critique » Read Now
by Thomas Jackson Rice. 15 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Death and Love in Iris Murdochs The Time of the Angels THOMAS JACKSON RICE Iris Murdochs tenth novel, The Time of the Angels...Bellamy, Michael O. "An Interview with Iris...
5.

Contemporary British Novelists ("Irish Murdoch: Everybody through the Looking Glass" begins on p. 62) » Read Now
by Charles Shapiro. 172 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...a writer . In his essay on Iris Murdoch, Leonard Kriegel finds that...written a fairly long essay on Iris Murdoch, dealing thoroughly and illuminatingly...particularly...
6.

The Comic Tradition in Irish Women Writers (Chap. 6 "Iris Murdoch's Moral Comedy") » Read Now
by Theresa O'Conner. 188 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Jane Lynch 73 6. Iris Murdochs Moral Comedy Flora Alexander...1862-1915 , Molly Keane 1904- , Iris Murdoch 1919- , Edna OBrien 1930...writer? Flora Alexanders essay, "Iris...
7.

Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy (Chap. 10 "Murdochian Muddles: Can We Get through Them if God Does Not Exist?") » Read Now
by Stanley M. Hauerwas. 242 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

Stanley Hauerwas critically engages the major theological & philosophical voices of modernity to reclaim a space for Christian discourse. Writing to a generation of Christians that finds itself at once comfortably "at home" yet oddly fettered & irrelevant in America, Hauerwas challenges contemporary...
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Stanley Hauerwas critically engages the major theological & philosophical voices of modernity to reclaim a space for Christian discourse. Writing to a generation of Christians that finds itself at once comfortably "at home" yet oddly fettered & irrelevant in America, Hauerwas challenges contemporary Christians to imagine what it might mean to "break back into Christianity" in a world that is at best semi-Christian.
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8.

Morality, Religious and Secular: The Dilemma of the Traditional Conscience (Disscussion of Iris Murdoch in "Two Secular Critics of Humanistic Ethics" p. 64) » Read Now
by Basil Mitchell. 168 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms...
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This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms of an entirely secular world-view, but which is more in line with a Christian understanding of man.
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9.

The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order ("Gendered Troubles in Post-treaty Ireland" begins on p. 172 and "Compulsary Marriage and Broken Engagements: The Red and the Green and Last September" begins on p. 179) » Read Now
by Margot Gayle Backus. 292 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Tales of child sacrifice, demon lovers, incestual relations, and returns from the dead are part of English and Irish gothic literature. Such recurring tropes are examined in this pioneering study by Margot Gayle Backus to show how Anglo-Irish gothic works written from the eighteenth through the...
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Tales of child sacrifice, demon lovers, incestual relations, and returns from the dead are part of English and Irish gothic literature. Such recurring tropes are examined in this pioneering study by Margot Gayle Backus to show how Anglo-Irish gothic works written from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries reflect the destructive effects of imperialism on the children and later descendents of Protestant English settlers in Ireland.
Backus uses contemporary theory, including that of Michel Foucault and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, to analyze texts by authors ranging from Richardson, Swift, Burke, Edgeworth, Stoker, and Wilde to contemporary Irish novelists and playwrights. By charting the changing relations between the family and the British state, she shows how these authors dramatized a legacy of violence within the family cell and discusses how disturbing themes of child sacrifice and colonial repression are portrayed through irony, satire, "paranoid" fantasy, and gothic romance. In a reconceptualization of the Freudian family romance, Backus argues that the figures of the Anglo-Irish gothic embody the particular residue of childhood experiences within a settler colonial society in which biological reproduction represented an economic and political imperative.
Backus's bold positioning of the nuclear family at the center of post-Enlightenment class and colonial power relations in England and Ireland will challenge and provoke scholars in the fields of Irish literature and British and postcolonial studies. The book will also interest students and scholars of women's studies, and it has important implications for understanding contemporary conflicts in Ireland.
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10.

Virtue Ethics (Chap. 5 "The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts" by Iris Murdoch) » Read Now
by Roger Crisp, Michael Slote. 290 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library

This volume brings together much of the most influential work undertaken in the field of virtue ethics over the last four decades. The ethics of virtue predominated in the ancient world, and recent moral philosophy has seen a revival of interest in virtue ethics as a rival to Kantian and utilitarian...
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This volume brings together much of the most influential work undertaken in the field of virtue ethics over the last four decades. The ethics of virtue predominated in the ancient world, and recent moral philosophy has seen a revival of interest in virtue ethics as a rival to Kantian and utilitarian approaches to morality. Divided into four sections, the collection includes articles critical of other traditions; early attempts to offer a positive vision of virtue ethics; some later criticisms of the revival of virtue ethics; and, finally, some recent, more theoretically ambitious essays in virtue ethics.
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11.

Society and Literature, 1945-1970 ("Literature, Politics, and Society") » Read Now
by Alan Sinfield. 266 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
12.

Men by Women ("From Subtext to Dream Text: The Brutal Egoism of Iris Murdoch's Male Narrators" begins on p. 222) » Read Now
by Janet M. Todd. 251 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
13.

Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good (Chap. 5 "Iris Murdoch") » Read Now
by Michael Weston. 198 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Literature, Entire Library

In this provocative new examination of the philosophical, moral and religious significance of literature, Michael Weston explores the role of literature in both analytic and continental traditions. He initiates a dialogue between them and investigates the growing importance of these issues for major...
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In this provocative new examination of the philosophical, moral and religious significance of literature, Michael Weston explores the role of literature in both analytic and continental traditions. He initiates a dialogue between them and investigates the growing importance of these issues for major contemporary thinkers.Each chapter explores a philosopher or literary figure who has written on the relation between literature and the good life, such as Derrida, Kierkegaard, Murdoch and Blanchot. Challenging and insightful, Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good is ideal for all students of philosophy and literature.
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14.

Fictional Points of View (Disscusion of Iris Murdock in multiple chapters) » Read Now
by Peter Lamarque. 228 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Literature, Entire Library
15.

Modern British Women Writers: An A-To-Z Guide ("Iris Murdoch 1919-1999" begins on p. 253) » Read Now
by Del Ivan Janik, Vicki K. Janik, Emmanuel S. Nelson. 428 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 British women writers of the 20th century. Some of these writers were born in England, while others, such as Katherine Mansfield and Doris Lessing, came from countries of the former Empire or Commonwealth. The volume also includes entries...
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This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 British women writers of the 20th century. Some of these writers were born in England, while others, such as Katherine Mansfield and Doris Lessing, came from countries of the former Empire or Commonwealth. The volume also includes entries for women of color, such as Kamala Markandaya and Buchi Emecheta.
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