Table Of ContentIris Murdoch: Texts and Contexts
Also by Avril Horner
BODY MATTERS: Feminism, Textuality, Corporeality (ed. with Angela Keane)
EDITH WHARTON: Sex, Satire and the Older Woman (with Janet Beer)
DAPHNE DU MAURIER: Writing, Identity and the Gothic Imagination
(with Sue Zlosnik)
EUROPEAN GOTHIC: A Spirited Exchange, 1760–1960 (ed.)
GOTHIC AND THE COMIC TURN (with Sue Zlosnik)
IRIS MURDOCH AND MORALITY (with Anne Rowe)
LANDSCAPES OF DESIRE: Metaphors in Modern Women’s Fiction
(with Sue Zlosnik)
LE GOTHIC: Influences and Appropriations in Europe and America
(ed. with Sue Zlosnik)
Also by Anne Rowe
THE VISUAL ARTS AND THE NOVELS OF IRIS MURDOCH
IRIS MURDOCH: A Reassessment (ed.)
SACRED SPACE, BELOVED CITY: Iris Murdoch’s London (with Cheryl Bove)
IRIS MURDOCH AND MORALITY (ed. with Avril Horner)
IRIS MURDOCH: A Literary Life (with Priscilla Martin)
Iris Murdoch: Texts and
Contexts
Edited by
Anne Rowe
and
Avril Horner
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Anne Rowe and Avril Horner 2012
All chapters © contributors 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-34828-8
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First published 2012 by
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors viii
List of Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
Anne Rowe and Avril Horner
Part 1 Theological and Visionary Contexts
1 Iris Murdoch: A Case of Star-Friendship 11
Don Cupitt
2 The Visionary Aspects of Iris Murdoch’s Philosophy 17
Heather Widdows
Part 2 Political and Cultural Contexts
3 Iris Murdoch and the Two Cultures: Science, Philosophy
and the Novel 33
Patricia Waugh
4 Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan and the Place of the Political
in Contemporary Fiction 59
Anne Rowe and Sara Upstone
Part 3 The Derridean Context
5 Murdoch and Derrida: Holding Hands under the Table 77
Tony Milligan
6 Murdoch, Derrida and The Black Prince 91
Paul S. Fiddes
7 Minding the Gap: Mourning in the Work
of Murdoch and Derrida 110
Pamela Osborn
Part 4 Contexts of Power
8 Iris Murdoch and Theodor Reik: S ado- Masochism in
The Black Prince 129
Mark Luprecht
v
vi Contents
9 Iris Murdoch and Elias Canetti: Towards a Reassessment 145
Elaine Morley
Part 5 Literary Contexts
10 T he ‘wondrous necessary man’: Canetti, The Unicorn and
The Changeling 163
Avril Horner
11 A Post- Christian Concept of Martyrdom and
the Murdochian Chorus: The One Alone and
T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral 177
Frances White
12 L anguage, Memory and Loss: Kristevan Psychoanalytical
Perspectives on Intertextual Connections in the Work of
Murdoch and Banville 192
Wendy Vaizey
Part 6 Biographical Contexts
13 T he Influence of Childhood Reading on the Fiction of
Iris Murdoch 209
Janfarie Skinner
14 M urdoch on Film: ‘R e- seeing Reality’ in Richard
Eyre’s Iris (2001) 225
Alex Ramon
Select Bibliography 239
Index 242
Acknowledgements
The editors are much indebted to Frances White for her careful
assistance with editing and proof-r eading. Pamela Osborn also provided
invaluable editorial help. On behalf of the contributors to Iris Murdoch:
Texts and Contexts, we would like to thank Katie Giles, archivist at
Kingston University, for her help in researching the documents in the
Iris Murdoch Special Collections that have so enriched many of the
essays in this volume. We are also grateful to Paula Kennedy and Ben
Doyle of Palgrave Macmillan, the former for her warm support for the
project and the latter for his encouragement and patience. Monica
Kendall from Palgrave also provided invaluable editorial assistance.
vii
Notes on Contributors
Don Cupitt is a philosopher of religion and scholar of Christian
theology. He is an Anglican priest and an Emeritus Professor of the
University of Cambridge where he was Dean of Emmanuel College for
many years. He is also a popular writer, broadcaster and commentator.
Don Cupitt was educated in both science and theology at the University
of Cambridge in the 1950s and was ordained as a deacon in the Church
of England in 1959 and priest in 1960. He has written more than 40
books – most recently Jesus and Philosophy (2009), The Meaning of the
West (2009) and Above Us Only Sky (2008).
The Revd Paul S. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Theology, University
of Oxford, and Director of Research, Regent’s Park College, Oxford,
where he was Principal from 1989 to 2007. He has also been Chairman
of the Board of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Oxford and
is now Honorary Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford. He is the author
or editor of 17 books and numerous articles, his most recent work being
on the relationship between Christian Doctrine and creative literature,
especially novels and poems of the twentieth century. His books include
The Creative Suffering of God (1988), Past Event and Present Salvation: The
Christian Idea of Atonement (1989), Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between
Literature and Christian Doctrine (1991), The Promised End: Eschatology in
Theology and Literature (2000), Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine
of the Trinity (2000) and Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and
Theology (2003).
Avril Horner is Emeritus Professor of English at Kingston University,
London. She has c o- authored three books with Sue Zlosnik, the most
recent of which is Gothic and the Comic Turn (2005), as well as numer-
ous articles and essays. They also co- edited Le Gothic: Influences and
Appropriations in Europe and America (2008) and Eaton Stannard Barrett’s
The Heroine (2011). She is the editor of European Gothic: A Spirited
Exchange, 1760–1960 (2002) and the author, with Janet Beer, of Edith
Wharton: Sex, Satire and the Older Woman (2011). She is also Series Editor
for Manchester University Press’s ‘International Gothic’ publications.
With Anne Rowe, she edited Iris Murdoch and Morality (2010) and they
are now working on The Letters of Iris Murdoch.
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Mark Luprecht is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in
the English Department at the University of Tennessee. He is the author
of books exploring the common intellectual heritage of Sigmund Freud
and Arthur Schnitzler, and the last painting of Paul Klee in its intellec-
tual setting. He most recently had an essay published in Iris Murdoch and
Morality, ed. Anne Rowe and Avril Horner (2010) and is researching the
circle surrounding Iris Murdoch and Elias Canetti.
Tony Milligan is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Aberdeen and
works on the philosophy of love and conceptions of otherness (other
people, other creatures and other places). He is the author of Beyond
Animal Rights (2010) and Love (2011). He has published articles on Iris
Murdoch in Philosophical Investigations, Ratio, Religious Studies and the
Heythrop Journal as well as contributing a chapter to the recent collec-
tion on Iris Murdoch and the Moral Imagination (2010). He is currently
writing a book on Civil Disobedience: Protest, Justification and the Law.
Elaine Morley was educated at the universities of Cork, Bonn, Konstanz
and Kent. She is currently Lecturer in German and Comparative
Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. Her current research
project investigates the impact of German- writing émigré authors on
British writers and writing during and after the Second World War. Her
book Iris Murdoch and Elias Canetti (forthcoming, 2013) examines the
literary relationship between Murdoch and Canetti.
Pamela Osborn was awarded a studentship by the Centre for Iris
Murdoch Studies and Kingston University in 2008. She is currently
writing her doctoral thesis on grief, mourning and survival in Murdoch’s
novels. Her essay entitled ‘“A Story About a Man”: The Demythologized
Christ in the Novels of Iris Murdoch and Patrick White’ was published
in Iris Murdoch and Morality, ed. Anne Rowe and Avril Horner (2010).
Alex Ramon teaches English Literature at Kingston University and
at the University of Reading. His publications include the book
Liminal Spaces: The Double Art of Carol Shields (2008) and the essay
‘A Literary Foremother: Iris Murdoch and Carol Shields’ (in Iris Murdoch:
A Reassessment, ed. Anne Rowe, 2007). He also regularly reviews books
for the British Journal of Canadian Studies. His current research projects
include a study of novel- to- film adaptations.
Anne Rowe is Reader in English Literature and Director of the Centre
of Iris Murdoch Studies at Kingston University. She is Lead Editor of the
