Egotism In The Black Prince And The Sea, The Sea

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) is not only an outstanding British novelist, but also an influential philosopher in the twentieth century. Her double identity gives her novels a unique flavor. Murdoch carries the critique of egotism as a core task in both her literary works and moral philosophy. Apart from her penetrating philosophical ideas, the narrative characteristics of her novels are also noteworthy. The underlying meaning of Murdoch's novels retains a close relationship with their modes of narration. As two of Murdoch's most representative novels, The Black Prince and The Sea, the Sea have displayed Murdoch's consummate craftsmanship of weaving her trenchant critique of individual's egotism into her skillful application of narrative techniques.Mieke Bal makes a three-layer distinction in a narrative, namely, text, story, and fabula. Bal stresses the interrelationship and interdependency of each layer, pointing out that this distinction aims to have a more exact and deep-going understanding of the narrative rather than disintegrate the reading process and break up the reading experience. This thesis employs Bal's narratological theory to trace the parallels between The Black Prince and The Sea, the Sea in the respective layer of text, story and fabula, so as to find out the shared narrative techniques Murdoch applies when she focuses on the criticism of egotism, pointing out narrative's irreplaceable significance in constructing the underlying meaning of Murdoch's novels. Former criticism pays more attention to theme and character, or philosophical ideas in Mudoch's novels, while narratological analysis remains a relatively new field of study. This narratological study of The Black Prince and The Sea, the Sea then hopes to raise more people's attention to the aesthetics of narrative in Murdoch's novels.Through analysis, this thesis comes out with the following findings:Both novels adopt character-bound narrators, whose prejudiced and presumptuous narration has disclosed their egotistic tendency. Character-bound focalizors combined with internal focalization in both novels have displayed two egotistic heroes' strenuous mental progression. As the shared power-actant in both novels, love motivates a series of events throughout both novels, where Murdoch explores the complex role love has played in both heroes' road to artistic and moral ideals. She suggests that even though love enlightens individuals to pay more attention to the others and propels them to the pursuit of perfection and the good, it poses a potential danger of aggravating individual's egotism, as it would bring about selfishness, possessiveness and obsession.