Studies in the Literary Imagination最新文献

{"title":"Making Love to Apollo: The Agalmatophilia of Iris Murdoch’s Athenian Lovers in A Fairly Honourable Defeat","authors":"Athanasios Dimakis","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0015","url":null,"abstract":"This essay explores the theme of Apollonian love in Iris Murdoch’s A Fairly Honourable Defeat. It traces the morally laden scopic and solar milieu of the novel that informs the portrayals of Morgan Browne’s “rape”—instigated by the secular theophany of Apollo—and, most importantly, the trials of love, and the homosexual quasi-marital Apollonian union of Simon Foster and Axel Nillson. Simon and Axel’s sexual intercourse with the statue of a kouros,1 on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, bears testimony to the continuous presence of Apollo in Murdoch’s fiction—made apparent in the admission in her Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals that she is a visualist still living “in a Greek light” (159). Having love as its thematic axis, this article focuses on the ways in which Murdoch’s fiction is informed by her theoretical work and permeated by the tenets of her visualist philosophy. It reflects on Murdoch’s philosophical and literary texts, highlighting the continuum and the uninterrupted flow of ideas between them. Selfless love is at the center of Murdoch’s idiosyncratic, quixotic conception of moral vision, as well as the philosophical idealism and spiritualism governing her ethically laden novels. Being two of Murdoch’s most daring passages, Simon’s and Axel’s strikingly unexplored paraphilia and ménage à trois with the kouros and Morgan’s erotic choreography of insolation allude to the impulses of low and high Eros. Murdoch consistently sublimates and elevates the unorthodox paraphilia of Apollo’s wooers through their transformative sexual intercourse with the most celebrated simulacrum of the solar deity of Apollo that illuminates their divine love. Being Apollo’s signifier, the reanimated kouros grants the ensuing illumination of his inamoratos in the novel’s finale, which palpitates with the triumph of their love. The novel is consistently discussed in light of philosophical works such as The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists and Metaphysics that address Murdoch’s Hellenic visualist morality. Following Murdoch’s theorizing of virtuous love as an escape from the egocentric tenebrosity of","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129213768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Failure of Philosophy to “think love”: Iris Murdoch as Phenomenologist","authors":"Margaret Guise","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0010","url":null,"abstract":"This brief notice from Iris Murdoch’s first philosophical treatise, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, contains in nuce her approach to a number of issues which were to prove of great significance to her personally and in the subsequent appraisal of her work as philosopher and novelist. First, a distinction is drawn between the writer of philosophy and the writer of fiction which suggests that the former is attempting to elucidate specific, often technical, issues, whereas the latter is more concerned with portraying the fullness of life’s phenomena, in so far as these are accessible to the novelist’s experience and imagination. Second, there is the apparently provocative contention that, in adopting a phenomenological approach, the novelist can arrive more directly at the truth, thus preempting the outcomes of philosophical analysis. Murdoch herself was fully aware of the limitations, as well as the possibilities, of phenomenology and its associated method of “reduction,” but I shall be suggesting in this essay that a rereading of her philosophical works is possible when these are viewed through the hermeneutical lens of the phenomenology of love that is presented within her novels. As has been observed by many commentators, eros, which she described as the “ambiguous mediator and moving spirit of mankind”1 and its multifarious manifestations, is the theme which consistently appears across her entire oeuvre, and she drew inspiration in that respect from a wide range of sources, including Platonism, NeoPlatonism, Christianity and Buddhism, in addition to the Simone Weilian concept of “unselfing” (Murdoch, Fire 34). In the best of her novels, however, such traditions, while clearly discernible, are always subservient to the realities and finitude of the human condition, which are presented","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131217901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”: Poetry, Multiplicity, and Being-towards-Death in The Time of the Angels and A Word Child","authors":"F. Tomkinson","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0013","url":null,"abstract":"At the beginning of Iris Murdoch’s The Time of the Angels, we are introduced to the character of Pattie O’Driscoll, a young woman of mixed race, living in an ambiguous position as the servant and ex-lover of the novel’s antihero, Carel Fischer, a priest who has lost his faith.1 Pattie is described as murmuring “the poetry which takes the place of the prayer which took the place of the poor defeated magic of her childhood” (Time 4). Shortly afterwards, we learn that she “liked poems that resembled songs or charms or nursery rhymes, fragments that could be musically murmured.... The world of art remained fragmented for her, a shifting kaleidoscopic pattern which amassed beauty almost without form” (22). In Murdoch’s A Word Child, the narrator, Hilary Burde, has a similar attitude to poetry, saying, “I carried a few odd pieces of literature like lucky charms” (28). On one level, this appreciation of poetry simply as fragment can be understood in terms of character analysis, suggesting some similarities in the inadequate educational background of the two characters, as well as having a symbolic resonance with the fragmentation of their early lives. Pattie and Hilary, though very different personalities, share a sense of exclusion and of being deprived of love. They also share a number of common circumstances and characteristics: both are the illegitimate children of women who were probably prostitutes, neither of them know the identity of their fathers, and both lost their mothers so young that they cannot really remember them. Both are presented as being of untidy and indeed fragmented personal appearance: Hilary’s propensity for odd socks matches Pattie’s tendency to lose her shoes as she walks around. Murdoch also invites us to link the two characters by telling us that Hilary once thought of himself as black: “Because of my hair I was called ‘Nigger’ at school and for a time I did in some curious way think of myself as being black. A boy once told me that I had a black penis and convinced me of it in spite of the visual evidence” (Word 27).","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128600271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Just and Erotic Gaze: Iris Murdoch’s Moral Ontology","authors":"Henry W. Spaulding","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Love, as philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch writes, “shifts the center of the world from ourselves to another place” (Metaphysics 17).1 Love is a complicated term and gestures to a type of human experience (romance, friendship, or family). However, Murdoch specifically invokes a romantic, erotic love in this quote. Erotic love shifts the center of individuals from themselves to another (16). This imagery, according to Murdoch, not only signifies the phenomenology of love in a romantic relationship but also, paradoxically, the movement of moral formation. Since romance and morality occupy this singular place in Murdoch’s moral philosophy, she is distinct from other moral philosophers of her day. The typical moral philosopher asks the question: what should I do to be good? For Murdoch the question is: what is Good? The distinction between these two questions highlights the richness of Murdoch’s work and the poverty of modern moral philosophy. Murdoch suggests that modernity suffers from a poverty in its commitment to an inward fetish of self-obsession, or what she calls the “fat relentless ego” (Sovereignty 51). The individual captivated by the “fat relentless ego” is the self-same one who is incapable of moral actions. This individual is selfish, self-possessed, and too confident in the prowess of the will for moral action. Murdoch sees much of the modern project as perpetuating the ego. The error in such a moral formation, according to Murdoch, is that proper moral formation is a journey elsewhere, namely to the Good itself. The Good is the ground and source of all reality and, in Plato’s esti-","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124863331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Talk of Lovers in a Great Hall of Reflection: Rereading Iris Murdoch’s The Fire and the Sun and The Bell","authors":"H. M. Altorf","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Love is a crucial notion in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy. In “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’” she writes: “We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central” (Sovereignty 337).1 This statement is now fifty years old and yet it seems as if it did not catch the attention of philosophers until very recently. The last few years in particular have seen a significant number of publications with “love” and “Iris Murdoch” in their titles.2 Love is, as Murdoch admits, ambiguous. Love can be heavenly and it can be possessive and destructive. Love can be of the Good, of people, and even of simple objects like stones. The makers of the 2001 film Iris chose wisely when they included this single sentence from Murdoch’s work: “Human beings love each other, in sex, in friendship, and love and cherish other beings, humans, animals, plants, stones” (Metaphysics 497).3 The sentence emphasizes the central role of love for Murdoch, its diverse expressions (including sex), and its focus on this world. Yet, as far as the current “philosophical culture”—in contrast to film—has been inspired by a “plain-speaking, down-to-earth, commonsensical focus on exactitude” and has cultivated a “suspicion, nay horror, of grand bold claims and sweeping assertions,” it should perhaps not surprise that it has taken some time for philosophers to start considering a notion that describes such a wide range of experiences (Chappell 89, 90).","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116469784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Speculation, Suicide, and the Silver Fork Novel","authors":"Leigh Wetherall Dickson","doi":"10.1353/SLI.2018.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/SLI.2018.0006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127305331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Calvinism, Enthusiasm, and Suicide: The Regulation of Subjectivity in the Romantic Period","authors":"Michelle Faubert","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114820372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Interracial Marriage Plot: Suicide and the Politics of Blood in Romantic-era Women's Fiction","authors":"Deanna P. Koretsky","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115842378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction to \"Suicidal Romanticism: Origins and Influences\"","authors":"Michelle Faubert","doi":"10.1353/sli.2018.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2018.0000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134574302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Suicide and Sovereignty in William Wordsworth","authors":"A. Bennett","doi":"10.1353/SLI.2018.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/SLI.2018.0003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":390916,"journal":{"name":"Studies in the Literary Imagination","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130995871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}