Iris Murdoch and Harry Weinberger

The novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and the painter Harry Weinberger engaged in over twenty years of close friendship and intellectual discourse, centred on sustained discussion of the practice, teaching and morality of art. This book presents a reappraisal of Murdoch's novels - chiefly, three mature novels, The Sea, The Sea (1978), Nuns and Soldiers (1980) and The Good Apprentice (1985), and two enigmatic late novels, The Green Knight (1993) and Jackson's Dilemma (1995) - which are perceived through the prism of her discourse with Weinberger. It draws on a run of almost 400 letters from Murdoch to Weinberger, and on Murdoch's philosophical writings, Weinberger's private writings, the remarks of both artists in interviews, and other material relating to their views on art and art history, much of which is unpublished and has received no previous critical attention. Scrutiny of their shared values, methods and the imagistic dialogue that takesplace in their art provides original perspectives on Murdoch's creativity, and new ways of understanding her experimentation with the visual arts. This book offers a new line of enquiry into Murdoch's novels, and into the relationship between literature and the visual arts.

1. Writer Meets Painter. - 2. Murdoch and Visual Art. - 3. Murdoch and Visual Artists. - 4. Kindred Spirits. - 5. `All Your Colours Are So Triumphant : The Rhetoric of Colour. - 6. `Shadow-Bound Consciousness : The Mask as Icon. - 7. `More than a Likeness : The Ethics of Portraiture. - 8. `Something in a Dark Picture : Reconceptualising Angels.