From "Selfness" To "Otherness"

Ms Murdoch (1919-1999) is considered one of the most productive and influential novelists in English literature after the Second World War. Critics believe that she has no serious rival among contemporary British novelists. The Black Prince ranks high among her novels. Critics regard it as her most distinctive and thoughtful work, and suggest that "readers who are unfamiliar with Murdoch's work would do well to begin with The Black Prince... the most critically acclaimed of Murdoch's novels."A novelist as well as a moral philosopher, Murdoch employs the novel as a vehicle for the representation of her philosophical concepts. She believes that "the fundamental thing which a great novel can't be without is a kind of moral vision". She teaches us how to love, how to perceive and appreciate reality, how to situate oneself in the moral world of other people, and how to become morally mature in the long run. She enlightens us greatly with her philosophical ideas and thoughts which are expressed in her novels.Readers who know Iris Murdoch's double career both as a novelist and philosopher may begin to read her novels with a simple, nagging curiosity. They are eager to know exactly what Murdoch is talking about, what sort of moral statement she is making in the novels and what the ideas behind her novels are. Thus my thesis is to explore how the philosophical concepts, such as Contingency, Love and Good, are implied or illustrated in her masterpiece The Black Prince, and to point out the only way to the goal of achieving Love and Good is to shift our attention from selfness to otherness.This thesis is divided into four chapters:In Chapter One, I first point out that Iris Murdoch is a philosophical novelist and make an exploration of the reason why Iris Murdoch takes great interest in expressing her philosophical concepts in literature. Her historical and educational background, working experience, love affairs, belief in the power of literature, and great influences of former great philosophers and novelists upon her all contribute to the formation of her interest. Then the synopsis of the novel The Black Prince is introduced to set a foundation stone for the detailed analysis in the following chapters. The following three chapters constitute the main part of the thesis, concerning respectively Murdoch's philosophical concepts of Contingency, Love and Good, and how Murdoch presents them in her novel The Black Prince. Finally, Based on the above analysis, a conclusion is drawn that only by shifting our attention from selfness to otherness can we truly achieve Love and Good in this world of Contingency. Meanwhile, true Love helps us overcome our natural Selfness.