Out Of Solipsism

Iris Murdoch(1919-1999)was one of the most distinguished novelists in Britain in 20th century.She was a prolific writer with 26 novels.Her The Black Prince won James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1973.This novel is about a man in his late fifties,who tired to focus on his writing in a quite place but got involved in a series of events and finally died in prison.This thesis studies how The Black Prince manifests the theme:out of solipsism.Starting with a close text-based study on this novel,the thesis finds out enough details to support the thesis statement.Firstly,seen from the plot,the protagonist's experience of struggle presents the complex process out of solipsism.As a representative of those who get struck in solipsism,Bradley shakes off his fantasy and indifference to others and the world,learns to respect the objective existence of them,recognizes the real world,and finally gets rid of solipsism with his love and attention to others.Secondly,as for narrative strategies,the novel contains non-linear narrative structure,dual structure and open-ended structure.It is found that the use of these narrative strategies enable the novel to be free from the protagonist's hegemony of discourse,presented multiple aspects of the story and manage to break a solipsistic way of narration.Lastly,considering Murdoch's attitudes towards writing and the world,this thesis notices how The Black Prince manifests her efforts to shake off fantasy and solipsism as a writer,either from her respect for the characters'independence or her awareness of the contingent and disordered reality.Murdoch's moral pursuit after getting out of solipsism is also mentioned,which is goodness.She takes love and attention as the only way to achieve the goal.After close study,this thesis discerns Iris Murdoch's anxiety and concern for the current situation:people are trapped in solipsism.It also illustrates how she attempts to work out a way to break away from solipsism and expresses her moral pursuit of goodness in this novel,which offers another angle to study and understand this great novelist as well as her other works.