A World Beneath the Net of Words: Iris Murdoch’s Novelistic Approaches to Moral Questions

This thesis explores the net of words, and the fictional world beneath it, in Iris Murdoch’s novelistic discourse. It focuses on five of the author’s representative novels and investigates the ongoing dialogue between her literature and moral ideas, by delving into her rejection of philosophical novels, her enquiry into the nature of artistic form, her accentuation of an unselfish vision, and her negotiation with the realist tradition. It begins by arguing that Murdoch’s adoption of first-person narration is one of her methods of approaching artistic truth, and is closely linked to her Platonic vision. Then, in analysing Murdoch’s engagement with the Gothic form, the thesis maintains that while her moral ideas are Platonic and idea-driven, her literary aesthetics are more rational and realistic. It proceeds to problematise the antithesis of Murdoch’s “open” and “closed” novels, and argues that in her fictional worlds, realism is affirmed more as the revelation of artistic truth and a way of overcoming the author’s selfhood than as the reproduction of empirical reality. By probing into Murdoch’s innovations in narrative form, such as adding forewords and postscripts to the story or using the methods of metafiction, the thesis highlights the issues of truth and fictionality in her artistic representation. It concludes by proposing that Murdoch’s way of depicting a variety of morally burdened characters, and of integrating her novelistic form with moral concepts, helps to open up the realist novel as well as distinguishing Murdoch as an author beyond her era.