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Language Lost and Found takes as its starting-point Iris Murdoch's claim that "we have suffered a general loss of concepts." By means of a thorough reading of Iris Murdoch's philosophy in the light of this difficulty, it offers a detailed examination of the problem of linguistic community and the roots of the thought that some philosophical problems arise due to our having lost the sense of our own language. But it is also a call for a radical reconsideration of how philosophy and literature relate to each other on a general level and in Murdoch's authorship in particular.
This book provides a fresh look at Angela Carter's critical and intertextual engagements with the past. Examining a broad range of Carter's work (novels, short stories, poetry, as well as stage plays), the essays in this collection explore a stimulating selection of topics, including folk song, medieval literature, magic realism, and the occult. Frequently drawing on newly available archival material, the volume lays out the ways in which Carter wove allusions into her own narratives, creating a lively and challenging dialogue with the cultural materials of the past and present. This volume will appeal both to scholars and students of contemporary women's writing, critical theory, gender studies, and British fiction.
The novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and the painter Harry Weinberger engaged in over twenty years of close friendship and intellectual discourse, centred on sustained discussion of the practice, teaching and morality of art. This book presents a reappraisal of Murdoch’s novels – chiefly, three mature novels, The Sea, The Sea (1978), Nuns and Soldiers (1980) and The Good Apprentice (1985), and two enigmatic late novels, The Green Knight (1993) and Jackson’s Dilemma (1995) – which are perceived through the prism of her discourse with Weinberger. It draws on a run of almost 400 letters from Murdoch to Weinberger, and on Murdoch’s philosophical writings, Weinberger’s private wr...
Iris Murdoch is a celebrated philosopher and novelist. Was she a political theorist? Many say that she focused upon the personal and the moral at the expense of the social and the political. However, this book argues the contrary. Murdoch had lifelong interests in politics, just as she did in literature and philosophy. She saw historical experience as the foundation upon which the inter-linked activities of literature, philosophy and politics are based. In reading Murdoch we get a clear insight into the nature of the modern political world. From an early political radicalism to a later anti-utopianism, Murdoch reacted to the great political events of the twentieth century, notably the Holoca...
This book provides a concise and highly readable reassessment of Iris Murdoch's engagement with philosophy throughout her life and proposes that she was, most importantly, a philosophical novelist. By investigating her use of philosophical argument in her fictional writing, it becomes clear that her narratives always depend upon a strong metaphysical underpinning. Leeson proceeds thematically through the philosophical phases of Murdoch's life and develops a clear argument that Murdoch reacts against the philosophies of Sartre, Plato, Nietzsche and Heidegger not only in her philosophical writings but also in her fiction. Indeed, it is in her fiction that her philosophical argument is most persuasive and accessible. This timely study provides new information regarding Murdoch's engagement with Martin Heidegger and also provides a detailed critique of critics who have overlooked Murdoch's engagement with philosophy within her fiction.
This volume is the third volume in Palgrave' Macmillan's new Iris Murdoch Today scholarly series. Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination is the first major collection of literary essays since her centenary in 2019. It brings together leading Murdoch scholars from across the world who expand the boundaries of recent criticism offering work not only on the novels, but on her unpublished poetry and archival materials. This collection discusses her interest in, and use of, Japanese literature; her relationship with, and reader-response to her, in Australia; Murdoch in the post #metoo era; her lifelong interest in the supernatural, same-sex relationships and friendships; as well as the use and abuse of biographical material. The collection widens the field of Murdoch studies and marks a new waypoint in the development of her critical reception.