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Feruza Shapsanova, Uzbekistan State World Languages University, UzbekistanAbstract
Investigating the interconnection between literature and philosophy is significant in twentieth-century literary studies. The current research focuses on the philosophical and moral aspects in Under the Net (1954), The Flight from the Enchanter (1956), The Sandcastle (1957), and The Unicorn (1963) by Booker Prize–winning English novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch. Murdoch wrote extensively on philosophy, addressing topics such as existential egoism in Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Murdoch, 1953), morality and art in The Sublime and the Good (Murdoch, 1959), problems of contemporary literature in Existentialists and Mystics (Murdoch, 1997), and the importance of Platonic love in The Sovereignty of Good (Murdoch, 1970). In addition, scholars such as Maria Antonaccio (2000, 2012) and Peter Conradi (2010) have significantly contributed to Murdoch scholarship through their published works. These works have an essential role in interpreting her novels. The forms of love toward self and others, illusion and reality, human nature, and morality are her fiction’s basis. In her novels, a reaction to Sartre’s philosophy of the lonely and free individual is distinguished. By creating certain prototypes of pseudo-characters like artist, saint, philosopher, and enchanter, Murdoch prefers saint figure as her ideal, which can challenge Sartre’s existential and outsider character in ethical questions. By typological character analysis of the above-mentioned novels, Murdoch’s philosophical concepts can be revealed. The research question investigates the transition from Existentialism to Neo-Platonism through the inseparable interconnection between literature and philosophy. Murdoch employs a range of philosophical perspectives that can help analyze contemporary literature semantically.
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Conference: ACAH2025Stream: Literature/Literary Studies
This paper is part of the ACAH2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Shapsanova F. (2025) Philosopher and Writer: Iris Murdoch’s Long Journey From Existentialism to Neo-Platonism ISSN: 2186-229X – The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2025 Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 213-223) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-229X.2025.17
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-229X.2025.17
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