Released from Bands: Iris Murdoch's Two Prosperos in "The Sea, The Sea"
1986; University of Wisconsin Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1208351
ISSN1548-9949
Autores Tópico(s)Contemporary Literature and Criticism
ResumoReaders familiar with the work of Iris Murdoch quickly recognize her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea as one of her so-called gothic works, similar in atmosphere and theme to The Unicorn, The Flight from the Enchanter, The Time of the Angels, and Bruno's Dream. It contains, in other words, certain characters and motifs we have come to expect: an isolated, rather sinister setting, an enchanter figure, a figure or figures under his/her spell, and a plot comprising elements of the bizarre, the grotesque, the mysterious, and the demonic.1 More specifically, we find Charles Arrowby, the protagonist of The Sea, The Sea, to be yet another of Murdoch's posturing Courtly Lovers,2 represented in other works by such figures as Effingham Cooper in The Unicorn, Martin Lynch-Gibbon in A Severed Head, John Rainborough in The Flight from the Enchanter, and Bradley Pearson in The Black Princemale figures who follow a pattern described by William F. Hall as moving from a world of form, pattern, and convention, into one of contingency.3 There is also another familiar and important Murdoch figure in this work, namely, the saint, a character who normally resides in the background, a wise, selfless individual who
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