Ethical Readings of Iris Murdoch’s Novels

The aim of this paper is to discuss ethical challenges occurring in the interpretation of Iris Murdoch’s novels. Due to her role as an academic who taught moral philosophy at Oxford and to the writings that she produced from such a position, her novels have also been consistently treated as vehicles for philosophical ideas, despite her constant warnings that her literary work and her philosophy are not interrelated. According to Murdoch, any philosophical mixture in her novels is purely accidental and should not be given any attention whatsoever. However, critics have not ceased to look into Murdoch’s novels for her philosophy. In this article, I question the limits of interpretation as far as three of Iris Murdoch’s novels are concerned.

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