Iris Murdoch and Morality

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 10
Notes on Contributors......Page 11
Notes on References and Abbreviations......Page 14
Introduction: Art, Morals and ‘The Discovery of Reality’......Page 16
Part I: Morality and the Novel......Page 30
1 Murdoch’s Mannered Realism: Metafiction, Morality and the Post-War Novel......Page 32
2 The Preacher’s Tone: Murdoch’s Mentors and Moralists......Page 46
3 Stories, Rituals and Healers in Iris Murdoch’s Fiction......Page 58
4 Laughing at Something Tragic: Murdoch as Anti-Moralist......Page 71
5 ‘Refinements of Evil’: Iris Murdoch and the Gothic......Page 85
Part II: A Moral Union: Philosophy and Literature......Page 100
6 Iris Murdoch, the Ethical Turn and Literary Value......Page 102
7 Murdoch’s Fictional Philosophers: What They Say and What They Show......Page 116
8 Death and Goodness: Bruno’s Dream and ‘The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts’......Page 128
9 Jackson’s Dilemma and ‘The Responsible Life of the Imagination’......Page 141
Part III: Morality without God: Iris Murdoch’s Secular Theology......Page 154
10 ‘The Dream that does not Cease to Haunt us’: Iris Murdoch’s Holiness......Page 156
11 ‘A Story about a Man’: The Demythologized Christ in the Novels of Iris Murdoch and Patrick White......Page 171
12 Do not Seek God outside your own Soul: Buddhism in The Green Knight......Page 183
13 The Moral Fate of Fictive Persons: On Iris Murdoch’s Humanism......Page 195
D......Page 209
K......Page 210
M......Page 211
S......Page 212
Y......Page 213