The Bell Archives - The Iris Murdoch Society

Poetry for the Soul: Murdoch’s Philosophy and Poetry as Vital Resources for the Modern World

28 December 2023By Sita TurnerBlog

Murdoch’s philosophy of ‘unselfing’ was first coined in The Sovereignty of Good in the 1970s. While the term itself was original, Murdoch’s attempts to grapple with concepts related to the morality of the self followed a trajectory laid down by centuries of her predecessors. One cannot fail to see parallels with the likes of Keats, for example, whose theory of ‘Negative Capability’, an idea that argued for attention to beauty and the freedom of the imagination, was epitomised in his poem Ode to a Nightingale.

A Clockwork Iris

1 December 2023By Robert CreminsBlog

Murdoch’s notable 1961 essay ‘Against Dryness’ introduces the idea of the ‘written’ novel – a line of argument that is an instance of the ‘confident, ambitious breadth of reference’ Peter J. Conradi mentions in his preface to Existentialists and Mystics:

Most modern English novels indeed are not written. One feels they could slip into some other medium without much loss. It takes a foreigner like Nabokov or an Irishman like Beckett to animate prose language into an imaginative stuff in its own right.

Re-reading early Murdoch: An Unofficial Rose

23 November 2023By Elizabeth WhittomeBlog

To re-read is not only to be swept up in thematic concerns. Once again, we are captivated by Murdoch’s genius as a novelist. If we have become used, some 60+ years later, to a restricted range of fashionable cultural concerns viewed through the narcissistic prism of semi-memoir, then re-absorption into Murdoch’s writing can be rich stuff indeed.

Other Journeys: Reflections on reading Iris Murdoch and making art

26 October 2023By Kevin PetrieBlog

Through my paintings and drawings I’ve attempted to capture moments in time and the symbolism of the everyday. By immersing myself in the act of painting and drawing, I would like to think that I’m engaged in a process of deep attention, allowing the artworks to evolve organically and often incorporating unexpected elements. Murdoch and, importantly, the Iris Murdoch community have offered me new ideas to explore, new ways to interpret and think about my own work, and also a lot of enjoyment!

The Iris Murdoch Review, No. 14 – Editorial Preface

21 September 2023By Frances WhiteBlog

The influence and impact of Iris Murdoch’s work is increasing exponentially each year and the Iris Murdoch Review likewise seems to grow with each issue. This edition contains a wide-ranging collection of essays, reviews and reports variously connected by specific features. We begin with celebrations of Murdoch at home and abroad, then move on to America, art, philosophy and literature – specifically by women writers: a set of topics that encapsulates Murdoch’s life of working, writing and travelling.

The Lost Jerusalem

12 September 2023By Miles LeesonBlog

Few authors write and subsequently publish their first attempted work, and Iris was no exception. Several novels were started and later discarded (almost certainly destroyed) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. We know very little about any of these save ‘Our Lady of the Bosky Gates’.

Iris and the Missing Tape

7 August 2023By John PotterBlog

Iris Murdoch herself visited Japan along with husband John Bayley at the request of the British Council. They stayed for around two weeks and the lecture Iris gave in Kobe that I attended took place at the Kobe Institute of St. Catherine’s on Friday 28th May 1993. This wide-ranging talk was on ‘The Modern Novel’.

The Sandcastle (Re-reading Early Murdoch)

18 July 2023By Elizabeth WhittomeBlog

Murdoch concludes her essay ‘The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited’ (1959) with a very expressive metaphor: ‘a novel must be a house fit for free characters to live in; and to combine form with a respect for reality with all its odd contingent ways is the highest art of prose.’ Surely we see this in The Sandcastle? Moreover, she never again explored the subject of portrait painting or indeed school-teaching in such depth, though we see in her next great novel The Bell a further development of an enclosed society with its tensions between sacred and profane love.

A Letter to the Board of Education – The Timeless Work of Iris Murdoch and Why it Must be Studied by Students in the Years To Come

26 June 2023By Heather RobbinsBlog

Iris Murdoch was ahead of her time in many ways, her philosophical work in particular being appreciated decades after her death. Her views on gender fluidity and sexuality were innovative and the way in which she communicates said views is of novel dynamism. Students would be given the opportunity to learn of her personal life as contextual information relating to her work, and in so doing would gain great insight into the intriguing life she led, and also learn from her fascinatingly tangled and occasionally tragic relationships, as well as her internal struggles and complexities.

Iris Murdoch’s The Bell, and English 20th-Century Communitarianism

12 June 2023By Ken WorpoleBlog

The ideal of living ‘in community’, of creating an ideal world in miniature, was an underlying leitmotif of late Victorian and 20th century English literary culture, and was of particular interest to Iris Murdoch, author of The Bell. To my mind this is one of her best novels, being the most open to the eddying currents of belief, faith and doubt in the post-war climate of political and social reconstruction. This principally resulted from her ambivalent relationship to the Anglican faith – Peter Conradi at one point describes her as an ‘Anglo-Catholic retreatant’ – and her fascination with the monastic tradition.

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