Iris Murdoch's Paradoxical Novels

Collecting the major critics who have described for the last third of a century the phenomena of Iris Murdoch's fiction, this study analyzes the stories her critics tell about her artistic processes. Now that Alzheimer's Disease has tragically removed her from the literary scene, it is time to examine her critical reception. There are three major questions at the heart of this reception: to what extent is she a philosophical novelist, a realistic novelist, a postmodern novelist? These three questions form the structure of the present study. The book also deals with the question of the status of Murdoch's reputation in the literary world. This is an intriguing question since Murdoch's works have been compared to those of Shakespeare, and her name has been put forward for the Nobel Prize in literature. Her works have been translated into 29 languages, and Harold Bloom says of her: "no other contemporary British novelist seems to me of Murdoch's eminence." This study is the first full-length work to deal with the literary criticism on Murdoch. BARBARA STEVENS HEUSEL is associate professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri.