Research topic: Dame Iris Murdoch

Dame Iris Murdoch (Dame Jean Iris Murdoch) , 1919-99, British novelist and philosopher, b. Dublin, Ireland. In 1948 she was named lecturer in philosophy at Oxford, and in 1963 she was made an honorary fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. Murdoch's novels, subtle, witty, convoluted, puzzling, and often wildly comic, have elicited widely differing critical interpretations. Murdoch views human beings as "accidental" creatures, purportedly free but actually constricted by the boundaries of self, society, and the natural world. Although the plots of her novels are complex, involving innumerable... Read more