The Existence of Other People: Byatt, Manning, and Murdoch

Abstract

Alfer, Alexa and Amy J. Edwards de Campos. A.S. Byatt: Critical Story-Telling. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2010. 194 pp. $90.00. Patten, Eve. Imperial Refugee: Olivia Manning's Fictions of War. Cork: Cork University Press, 2011. 234 pp. 35 [pounds sterling]. Rowe, Anne and Avril Horner, eds. Iris Murdoch: Texts and Contexts. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.246 pp. $85.00. [Virtue] is concerned with really apprehending that other people exist, writes Iris Murdoch. The knowledge and which is virtue is precisely kind which novelist needs to let his characters be, to respect their freedom and to study them themselves in that most significant area of activity, where they are trying to apprehend reality of (284). Murdoch's concern with literary a means of apprehending reality of others is shared by A. S. Byatt and Olivia Manning, other subjects of three excellent critical works discussed here. Murdoch's engagement with this concept, in philosophical and critical writings in her fiction, is surely basis for much of her long-term influence on both literary studies and ethics, well on younger writers such Byatt. Proponents of ethical turn in literary criticism certainly acknowledge this powerful influence. S. L. Goldberg, for instance, praises The Sovereignty of Good deepen[ing] my understanding of moral aspects of literature that my debts to it are now too basic and too pervasive to be spelt (253). Despite some negative voices, many philosophers accept Murdoch's work ground breaking: Charles Taylor sees her a trail-blazer (qtd. in Rowe and Homer 23), while Martha Nussbaum claims that Murdoch more than any of her contemporaries inspired growing concern with the moral significance of imagination (137). Given her undoubted influence, current directions in Murdoch studies become a matter of some importance, and Iris Murdoch: Texts and a stimulating essay collection, provides a useful indication of current trends and future possibilities. Many of essays use materials from Murdoch Special Collections in Kingston University Library, London, which includes among its various holdings Peter Conradi's extensive archive well Murdoch's Oxford library. Murdoch's annotations on her books provide a rich source for scholars. Elaine Morley, for instance, argues, from examination of Murdoch's extensive comments on her copies of Elias Canetti's works and from a careful reading of both writers, for need to reassess their relationship as writers rather than lovers (158). Frances White, discussing T. S. Eliot's Murder in Cathedral in relation to one of Murdoch's least-known works, her 1987 radio play The One Alone, notes markings on Murdoch's acting copy of Eliot's play, dating from undergraduate days when she performed in a student production of it. Comparing Eliot's celebrated Christian martyr with Murdoch's nameless political prisoner, White argues convincingly for importance of The One Alone illuminating Murdoch's concern with role of suffering in moral life. The various essays in this collection are organized into sections on various contexts: White's essay appears among Literary Contexts, and other sections focus on Theological Political and so on. The editors point out that, well examining intertextual relations, their collection develops an emerging strand of current Murdoch criticism that ... align[s] her work with thinkers and modes of writing she would herself have resisted (2), and this approach is certainly vindicated by three strong essays addressing Murdoch's reading of Derrida, to whom she was consistently hostile. Both Tony Milligan and Paul S. Fiddes, acknowledging flaws in her treatment of Derrida, explore this misreading a basis for understanding her larger concerns. …