Culturological Construct in the Reception of Personosphere in Iris Murdoch’s Novels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31861/pytlit2016.94.123Keywords:
Iris Murdoch, reception, cultural construct, personosphere, ekphrasisAbstract
The article concerns issues of culturological construct in the novels of such prominent author in British fiction as Iris Murdoch. The ekphrastic content in the reception of a personosphere in her novels is of functional significance.
The interrelation of the author's position and functions of a narrator is regarded as an integral part of Iris Murdoch’s fiction in which art construct plays a specific communicative role in creation of her literary text personosphere. In the context of Murdoch’s fiction the culturological phenomenon of personosphere is rather close to the view of the paradigm, which means a structural organization of the text concerning relationships between characters.
The communication of the author (Iris Murdoch) with her readers occurs indirectly, through the characters – explicit authors of her works. The characters of her novels (a writer, a linguist, a theater director, an artist etc.) raise the issues that concern Murdoch herself: the fate of an artist, the role of art and spiritual values in the environment devoid of spirituality.
Murdoch’s philosophical essays (“Conceptions of Unity. Art”) and dialogues (“Art and Eros: A Dialogue about Art”), which argue the causality of art to the moral improvement of the modern man, serve as a metatext for the writer’s considerations of the outlined issues.
Verbal description of visual arts (paintings, sculptures) in the novels of I. Murdoch (“A Fairly Honourable Defeat”, “An Unofficial Rose”, “The Sea, the Sea”, “Jackson’s Dilemma”) is often accompanied by aesthetic assessment. Furthermore it is an embodiment of some figurative techniques (ekphrastic allusions and reminiscences), a reflection of her own artistic outlook, literary manner and style.
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