Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective Fiction - Hardcover

Nicol, B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333688392 ISBN 13: 9780333688397

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Synopsis

Iris Murdoch: the Retrospective Fiction considers one of the major British novelists of the postwar years in a new light, arguing that Murdoch's
compulsive plots and characters are motivated by the insistent power of the past. Bran Nicol traces a fascinating 'double movement' at work in Murdoch's fiction, where the past figures as an elusive site of 'truth' and an inescapable source of trauma. Through persuasive readings of some of her key novels Nicol demonstrates that the past is continually made present in Murdoch's fiction in a number of ways: through guilt, nostalgia, the uncanny, and also by way of art and rational investigation.

The book is the first to examine her 'first-person retrospective novels' as a separate group within the larger body of her work. In these novels, the concern with the past is intensified by the peculiar synthesis of form and content. The book also provides an accessible and lively consideration of how Murdoch's fiction and theory relate to some of the key currents of twentieth-century thought: postmodernism and poststructuralism, Bakhtin's poetics, modernism and psychoanalysis

About this title

Review:

'...lucid, insightful and well-documented.' - David Herman, Modern Fiction Studies

'...[Nicol] offers a fresh and valuable perspective on many of [Murdoch's 'retrospective fictions'] distinctive features...an interesting and lucid book about Murdoch's narrators, a subject that has not had proper attention...' - George Soule, The Iris Murdoch Newsletter

'Nicol's is an important voice in Murdoch criticism, at first glance maverick, but essentially original and challenging, and it is very good to have his study with us, brought up-to-date.' - Peter J. Conradi, author of the acclaimed official biography, Iris Murdoch: A Life
Reviews for the first edition:

'...lucid, insightful and well-documented' - David Herman, Modern Fiction Studies

'...[Nicol] offers a fresh and valuable perspective on many of [Murdoch's 'retrospective fictions'] distinctive features...an interesting and lucid book about Murdoch's narrators, a subject that has not had proper attention...' - George Soule, The Iris Murdoch Newsletter

Synopsis:

This study argues that Murdoch's plots and characters are motivated by the question of the past. Drawing on many of her key works, and providing an analysis of her "first person retrospective" novels as a separate group within the larger body of her fiction, the author also considers Murdoch's relation to key currents within 20th-century thought, such as modernism, postmodernism, and psychoanalysis.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0333688392
• ISBN 13: 9780333688397
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 183