Academic Discourse
  • Year: 2012
  • Volume: 1
  • Issue: 2

The Element of Contingency in Human Relationships: A Study of Iris Murdoch's Early Novels

  • Author:
  • Rashmi Verma
  • Total Page Count: 8
  • Page Number: 32 to 39

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, India

Online published on 18 June, 2014.

Abstract

The critics have classified Iris Murdoch's novels as Philosophical, symbolist, moralist, didactic, novels of ideas, realistic, fantastic, Gothic and allegorical. Criticism of her novels has mostly focused on the characters, the form and the emerging patterns, her elusive symbolism and, in broader terms, her moral concerns and realism. The present paper takes up the study of human relationships, which I consider central to Murdoch's novels, have received comparatively little critical attention apart from by-the way references in character analysis.

Keywords

Existentialism, Realistic tradition in Novel, Moral philosophy, Contingency, Freud's psycho-analysis, Platonism