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Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch
Bibliography: pages 154-163.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of English Language and Literature
2016
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| _version_ | 1867613159387299840 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Sulcas, Roslyn Lee |
| author2 | Fincham, Gail |
| author_browse | Fincham, Gail Sulcas, Roslyn Lee |
| author_facet | Fincham, Gail Sulcas, Roslyn Lee |
| author_sort | Sulcas, Roslyn Lee |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Bibliography: pages 154-163. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/21881 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:31:43.046Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publishDateRange | 2016 |
| publishDateSort | 2016 |
| publisher | Department of English Language and Literature |
| publisherStr | Department of English Language and Literature |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/21881 Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch Sulcas, Roslyn Lee Fincham, Gail English Language and Literature Bibliography: pages 154-163. 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". 2016-09-25T16:22:41Z 2016-09-25T16:22:41Z 1989 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21881 eng application/pdf Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | English Language and Literature Sulcas, Roslyn Lee Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch |
| title_full | Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch |
| title_fullStr | Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch |
| title_full_unstemmed | Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch |
| title_short | Narrative techniques in the novels of Iris Murdoch |
| title_sort | narrative techniques in the novels of iris murdoch |
| topic | English Language and Literature |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21881 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT sulcasroslynlee narrativetechniquesinthenovelsofirismurdoch |