Seeking The Lost Identity

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), one of the most prolific novelist since CharlesDickens, is a prestigious philosopher and literary critic in the late20thcentury.Harold Bloom, a distinguished critic, noted that “No other contemporary Britishnovelist seems to me be of Iris Murdoch’s eminence”(Bloom79). During her morethan40years’ writing career, Murdoch completed26novels,6philosophical worksas well as a large number of poetry collections and plays.The Black Prince published in1973is Iris Murdoch’s only novel that wins theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize. This thesis intends to probe into the theme of theprotagonist Bradley’s identity seeking in the light of Bakhtinian theory. The thesis iscomprised of three parts in total.The first part is a brief introduction to the studies of The Black Prince, theproblem to be studied, the theory to be adopted as well as the structural layout of thethesis. The second part is the body part, consisting of three chapters. Chapter Onecenters on Bradley’s lost of identity during the ritual of crowning and decrowning.Chapter Two focuses on Bradley’s uncertainty of identity by analyzing polyphonicfeatures concerning multi-voicedness and free dialogic relations. Chapter Threeexplores Bradley deals with his identity crisis in the chronotope of the road. The thirdpart is the conclusion, which summarizes the main idea of the thesis and reiteratesthe arguments. Bradley’s identity seeking illuminates us that the biggest challengeand impediment of fulfilling our dreams comes from ourselves. We should respectcontingency ubiquitously existing in the world and show affection to our belovedones on the way to our self-improvement.