From Solipsism To Dialogism:a Study Of The Sea,the Sea From Bakhtin’s Theory Of Dialogue

Regarded as the most prominent British novelist of last 20^thcentury,Iris Murdoch has great international influence.Like Sartre and Camus in France,one of her writing features is to blur the limits between literature and philosophy.In fact,she keeps considering the moral question in modern society during her whole life,but unlike pure philosophers,Murdoch tends to incorporate abstract philosophical concepts into images and plots.She believes that one should understand life as a“spiritual pilgrimage from the surface to the real”.People’s moral growth is not achieved overnight,but a long travel of pursuing goodness from breaking one’s illusion to realize others’existence and outside reality.And based on this philosophical thinking,Iris Murdoch’s representative work The Sea,the Sea also presents her concern for one’s self-state,importance of others’existence and Buddhist-related ideas.As Murdoch’s only novel to win the Booker Prize,The Sea,the Sea has received widespread attention since its publication,and the moral philosophy embodied in the work has always been the focus of critics.However,it is not so often to analyze carnival dialogue,polyphonic dialogue and intertextual dialogue in this novel from the perspective of Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue.Theory of dialogue can be said to be a concrete embodiment of Bakhtin’s Dialogism on art,especially novel study.But in essence,Dialogism is a philosophical idea based on Bakhtin’s consideration on how to reconstruct human relationships.As same as Murdoch,Bakhtin also emphasizes the danger of being self-centered,pointing that only when one realizes the legal existence of others and acknowledges the equal rights of other’s consciousnesses and voices can he recover the normal relationships with others through dialogue.Therefore,to show Murdoch’s attention on the same philosophical question and the significance of dialogue,this thesis is going to analyze different dialogic relationships in this novel from theory of dialogue.More importantly,it also needs to show Murdoch’s dialogic artistic thought and her emphasis on the effect of dialogue on reconstructing human relationships.First,according to Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory,this thesis aims to explore Charles’state of falling into his fantasy,which means that he seems to give up power willingly but the fact is that Charles unable to accept he has been excluded from power center by his friends.Charles has to become an“uncrowned king”since he has retired,although he himself does not want to admit it,and his friends are excited that they can get rid of the control of“tyrant”Charles.The cognitive gap between Charles and his friends makes the novel be covered in a carnival atmosphere with the appearance of his friends,manifested in the sarcasm,ridicule,and murder from his friends.Furthermore,combined with Bakhtin’s Polyphonic Theory,it is discussed that after a series of accidental events and intrusion of others’discourses,Charles’illusion begins to collapse.Therefore,he is forced to realize the existence and uniqueness of others.This part involves polyphonic dialogue in narrative structure,Charles’s dialogues with his friends,especially his cousin James,and dialogue between Buddhist Culture and Consumer Culture.The last part is to point out how Murdoch finishes the echo of characters,plots and themes with Shakespeare’s The Tempest based on Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality and Bakhtin’s intertextual thinking in his theory of dialogue.It can be said that although Murdoch’s The Sea,the Sea and Shakespeare’s The Tempest belong to different times,the same concern on power and human relationship forms their similar artistic thought,which helps to create a bridge of dialogue between two authors.Therefore,based on the former study,here is the conclusion of this thesis:In the process of moral growth,it is easy to regard others as static things out of one’s self-protection system,which means that people are inclined to ignore the variability of human beings and life.As the result,to get rid of one’s fantasy,realize the legal existence of others and regard human relationships from dialogic and connective perspective are one of the most suitable ways for people to achieve moral growth in modern society.