Show Notes
In this 75th Episode Special, Miles is joined by Daniel Read (Kingston University, UK) to answer questions from the Iris Murdoch Society and via the social media channels.
You can find out much more, and join the society, here: www.irismurdochsociety.org.uk
The questions sent in are:
1. Could Iris Murdoch drive? 2. How should Murdoch’s philosophical seriousness be reassessed in light of recent scholarship on her as a public intellectual? 3. In what ways did Murdoch’s Irish background shape her imagination, ethics, and sense of exile or belonging? 4. How has Murdoch’s relationship with religion and the sacred been represented differently in scholarship versus media portrayals? 5. How should Murdoch’s private life—especially her complex relationships—be integrated (or resisted) in critical interpretations of her novels? 6. What is Murdoch’s place within post-war British women’s writing, and why has she often been treated as an exception rather than part of a continuum? 7. How do contemporary debates about feminism, agency, and power reframe Murdoch’s representation of women? 8. Murdoch insists on the reality of the Good as something external and authoritative. How might that claim speak to contemporary moral and political life, where moral language is often treated as subjective or unstable? 9. Murdoch’s late novels are often described as difficult, bewildering, even radically alien. How should we read the strangeness of the late Murdoch: as decline, experiment, or metaphysical intensification? 10. What do you think is the most important unfinished task for Murdoch scholarship today?
More from The Iris Murdoch Society podcast
In this episode Miles is joined by Justin Broackes (Brown, USA) and Matt Dougherty (CEU, Vienna) to discuss the influence of Martin Heidegger on Murdoch's philosophy, and Murdoch's forthcoming work on Heidegger which has been edited by Justin.
In this episode Miles discusses Murdoch's eighteenth novel, Henry and Cato, on the 50th anniversary of its publication.
In this episode Miles is joined by Elizabeth Whittome to discuss the profound influence Shakespeare had on the fiction, poetry and philosophy of Iris Murdoch. The conversation ranges widely across Murdoch's life and work, with special attention paid to her novels of the 1970s, including The Black Prince and The Sea, The Sea.
In this episode Miles is joined by Rebecca Moden (Birmingham Newman University, UK) to discuss the new exhibition at the University of Chichester, Iris Murdoch among the Artists. Drawing on newly-discovered artworks by Murdoch, those by her friends, students and collaborators, and new works by three contemporary British artists responding to her fiction and philosophy, the exhibition runs until the 10th December.
In this Birthday Lecture Daniel Read (Kingston University, UK) discusses Murdoch's dramatic work and the connections to her life, fiction and philosophy. Although lesser-known, Read makes the case that her dramatic work needs to be reassessed in the light of new materials and biographical insights.