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Iris Murdoch and Morality provides innovate readings of Murdoch's novels, philosophy and theology. It situates her work within current theoretical and philosophical debates and suggests it is a crucial link between twentieth and twenty-first century writing and theory. Discussions of her fiction focus on her 'mannered realism', her idiosyncratic use of the Gothic, her anti-moralistic humour and the roles of some subversively constructed 'preachers'. Explorations of the complex moral philosophy within her novels reveal how it is both tested and contested there, for example by her use of fictional philosophers. Her more focused meditations on virtue and evil are investigated through attention to one of her fictional mystics and to the greatest moral catastrophe of the twentieth century - the Holocaust. Insights into Murdoch's 'neo-theology' are offered alongside her demythologizing of Christ and her engagement with Buddhism and Humanism, each offering new ways of thinking about her relationship to God and the Good. The nature of goodness and evil is as much the subject of this volume as Iris Murdoch herself.
