Platonism In Iris Murdoch's Fiction

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) is considered as one of the most productive and influential novelists in the 20th century English literature. She dedicates all her life to writing for forty years on end, and reaps bumped harvest including twenty-six novels, four philosophical works, and a number of plays, as well as poems and articles, which have been fully displayed her excellent aesthetic talent and remarkable art creativity. The dual identity as a philosopher and novelist has brought her a lot of acclaim and kept herself an unique position in the English literature. It's not hard to find that, in many of her novels, Murdoch always uses her novels to communicate her moral vision in preference to her ethics. And with regard to Murdoch's ethical methodology, she profits greatly from her spiritual supervisor--Plato. Readers who enjoy her novels always find that Platonism is permeated all through Murdoch's works, including her novels or her philosophical works.This paper is to tease out Plato's important ethical conceptions which are fully displayed in Murdoch's literary works and, on this foundation, make an ethical interpretation of Iris Murdoch's most representative novel The Black Prince .The paper consists of six chapters, including an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The body is divided into four chapters. The part of introduction briefly introduces Iris Mudoch's dual identity as a philosopher and novelist and her major literary achievements, outlines the synopsis of the novel The Black Prince and reviews the previous academic researches on Iris Murdoch both at home and abroad. Chapter 2 presents the perspective of ethical literary criticism and systemizes the Plato's conceptions of ethics in Murdoch's literary and philosophical works. On the basis of theoretical perspective, Chapter 3 starts to make a detailed penetration into Murdoch's novel The Black Prince, which is built on Plato's first important conception--"Eros". Plato's description of "Eros'' bears both vice and virtue in human beings' quest from appearance to reality. And this chapter is to clarify how the characters in her novels pirgrim from ego-fantasy to realistic goodness under the transcendent everlasting power--"Eros". Chapter 4 goes on to illustrate Plato's second important conception on "Art" incarnated in the novel, in which the main character is an ego-ridden "artist", whom is eager to break away from their own moral predicaments. Only with the moral function of the art can they discern the "good arts" from "bad arts" and finally see the goodness and lightness. Chapter 5 is to further expound how the illusory "Cave Myth", which is first presented in Plato's writings and then developed into a famous philosophical metaphor, is displayed in the novel and how the symbols of "the fire" and "the sun" represent the different spiritual stages of the protagonists during the process of the infinite quest for goodness and reality. In Chapter 6, the conclusion, it re-confirms the far-reaching influence of Plato's ethics in Mudoch's novels, as well as Murdoch's contribution in reconstructing and reestablishing the traditional well-ordered moral world which will make ourselves become better in such a contingent and absurd modern world. A fair, objective remark is given to Iris Murdoch and her works at its end.