Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch

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dc.contributor.advisorFincham, Gailen_ZA
dc.contributor.authorSulcas, Roslyn Leeen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2016-09-25T16:22:41Z
dc.date.available2016-09-25T16:22:41Z
dc.date.issued1989en_ZA
dc.descriptionBibliography: pages 154-163.en_ZA
dc.description.abstractIn this thesis I have departed from the prevalent critical concentration on the affiliations between Murdoch's fiction and philosophy, and have attempted to explore the relationship between her narrative techniques and the conventions of realism. In doing so, I use the narrative theory of Dorrit Cohn, who proposes that novelists concerned to render a sense of "reality" are also those who construct the most elaborate and artificial fictive worlds and characters. I propose that Murdoch's "real-isation" of her fictional world incorporates the problems of access to, and representation of the real. This links her to two ostensibly antithetical traditions: that of British realism (within which she would place herself), and also a fictional mode consonant with the poststructuralist writing that focuses on such problems. An examination of the early novels in terms of the correlation between "realism" and technical sophistication implied by Cohn reveals a division of narrative purpose that Murdoch has herself described in the early part of her career as an alternation between "open" and "closed" novels. I suggest in the thesis that these two fictional modes are deliberate choices of style on Murdoch's part, rather than a "failed" realism, and that their different readerly rewards are compounded by the successful merging of these competing .views of the real in the later novels. My narratological emphasis in this dissertation indicates also the ways in which Murdoch's fiction incorporates the comedic, the romantic and the gothic into a framework of orthodox verisimilitude, utilising the clashes between these genres to foreground the difficulties of a unified view. This is particularly successful in the first-person novels, where the overt problematising of self-representation paradoxically feeds into our sense of their "realism".en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationSulcas, R. L. (1989). <i>Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21881en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationSulcas, Roslyn Lee. <i>"Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21881en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationSulcas, R. 1989. Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Sulcas, Roslyn Lee AB - In this thesis I have departed from the prevalent critical concentration on the affiliations between Murdoch's fiction and philosophy, and have attempted to explore the relationship between her narrative techniques and the conventions of realism. In doing so, I use the narrative theory of Dorrit Cohn, who proposes that novelists concerned to render a sense of "reality" are also those who construct the most elaborate and artificial fictive worlds and characters. I propose that Murdoch's "real-isation" of her fictional world incorporates the problems of access to, and representation of the real. This links her to two ostensibly antithetical traditions: that of British realism (within which she would place herself), and also a fictional mode consonant with the poststructuralist writing that focuses on such problems. An examination of the early novels in terms of the correlation between "realism" and technical sophistication implied by Cohn reveals a division of narrative purpose that Murdoch has herself described in the early part of her career as an alternation between "open" and "closed" novels. I suggest in the thesis that these two fictional modes are deliberate choices of style on Murdoch's part, rather than a "failed" realism, and that their different readerly rewards are compounded by the successful merging of these competing .views of the real in the later novels. My narratological emphasis in this dissertation indicates also the ways in which Murdoch's fiction incorporates the comedic, the romantic and the gothic into a framework of orthodox verisimilitude, utilising the clashes between these genres to foreground the difficulties of a unified view. This is particularly successful in the first-person novels, where the overt problematising of self-representation paradoxically feeds into our sense of their "realism". DA - 1989 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 1989 T1 - Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch TI - Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21881 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/21881
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationSulcas RL. Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 1989 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21881en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of English Language and Literatureen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Humanitiesen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subject.otherEnglish Language and Literatureen_ZA
dc.titleNarrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdochen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMAen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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