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Iris Murdoch Biography

Iris Murdoch

(Jean O.Bayley, Dublin, 1919-Oxford, 1999) English narrator and essayist.His childhood was spent in London.From 1938 to 1942 he studied philosophy and literature at Somerville College, Oxford where he learned Latin and Greek and modern languages.From 1948 to 1963 he taught philosophy at Oxford and between 1942 and 1944 he worked at the British Treasury and then in Brussels, at the United Nations.

During the last part of his life he suffered from Alzheimer's disease.He wrote more than thirty novels, plays, and volumes of poetry.His first published book was Sartre, the romantic rationalist (1953), a study on the French philosopher and his system of ideas. Bajo la red (1954) was his first novel.

Some novels of his first period, such as La campana ( The Bell , 1958) or The Red and the Green (1965), which takes place in the framework of the 1916 insurrection in Dublin, follow the historical and psychological tradition of the 19th century novel.Other works, on the other hand, show a tendency towards allegorical and mythical narration, and represent the human condition through artificially created characters, as in A Severed Head (1961); The Italian Girl ( An Italian Girl , 1964), external witness of stormy events in an upper-middle-class environment dominated by instincts; The Time of Angels (1966), where the characters illustrate philosophical thought in a secularized world, or in the more mature Bruno's Dream ( Bruno's Dream , 1969), which deals with the subject of learning about death.

After 1968 he raised the issue of the unconscious, and his style became more detailed and introspective, the plots became more intricate and full of violence, due to the combinations of all kinds of loves, and for means of mysterious and surprising effects.In addition, the language used in the novels was increasingly refined, with fragments of great virtuosity, progressively employing cultural parallels with classical and oriental mythology, acquiring a meta-narrative literary and artistic value.Among his most technically ambitious works are The Black Prince ( The Black Prince , 1973), written in the form of a writer's diary, published posthumously by a publisher friend, who added to it some comments that reveal different versions of the events, and El mar, el mar ( The Sea, the Sea , 1978), which slowly reveals its parallelism with the Shakespearean The Tempest , halfway between the diary and the imaginary autobiography of a director.

Murdoch's style is a complex combination of intellectualism and sordid themes, of everyday life and metaphysics.The characters in his works do not stop confronting their ideas and existence with the great works of culture, and suffer both emotional and intellectual anguish, because the meaning of their lives escapes them in the face of the fundamental questions that are asked.

They are controversial protagonists, immersed in their conscience; one part of them can be diabolical and the other never ceases to wonder about the edifying and positive reason for life and morals: the heroes of their novels are usually intellectuals, writers, painters, scientists or philosophers.She also looked at homosexuality, incest, and impotence, especially in her male characters.

Some critics have compared her to her 19th century predecessor, G.Eliot (pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans Cross), though others believe that his style and energetic ideas have more to do with the strength of W.Shakespeare and F.Dostoevsky for the balance between the supernatural and reality, in addition to other influences such as those of thinkers in the line of Ludwig Wittgenstein and S.Weil.

His novels can also be read as scenarios where Western thought is debated on a battlefield: works of ideas or philosophical arguments, although surrounded by a halo of mystery.A certain perverse sadism of his plots borders on a "philosophy of good." In his own words, "there is no doubt that we are spiritual creatures, subjected to the attraction of perfection and made for the Good."

He also wrote a series of radical critical works about modern philosophical currents such as Kantianism, existentialism and utilitarianism, where he argued the inability of such systems to respond to the problems of contemporary man.Halfway between the philosophical and fictional genre, he wrote a dialogue, Acastos , which, although it takes place in the Athens of the 5th century BC, examines the contemporary world.His latest work, Existentialists and Mystics , was published in 1997.

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