Iris Murdoch’s Wild Imagination

This highly original monograph extends the well-established critical field of work on Murdoch’s view of attention as the ultimate moral value to a new area, ecocriticism. Drawing on a remarkable breadth of material, Oulton outlines the development of Murdoch’s thinking about the natural world in her fiction, philosophy and poetry across her whole career, in a ground-breaking study which opens up new avenues for Murdoch studies and literary ecocriticism.
—Tasha Alden, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British Fiction, Aberystwyth University, UK.

In the current resurgence of interest in Iris Murdoch, many sides of her thinking have been reviewed, but this is the first book on her sense of nature and the environment. It is an outstanding work, perceptive in considering the multiple ways in which Murdoch thinks about nature. It shows how Murdoch explores the power, order and mystery of nature in her poetry, novels and prose writing. A ‘must read’ for Murdoch enthusiasts, and all who value a critical appreciation of nature and the environment.
—Gary Browning, Emeritus Professor of Political Thought, Oxford Brookes University, UK.

This book presents the first ecocritical study of novelist, philosopher, poet and public intellectual Iris Murdoch (1919–1999). It brings her love of the natural world into the light, arguing for its critical significance when Murdoch conveys an awareness of intricately interconnected ecologies through her work: an awareness that anticipates the motivations and concerns of modern-day environmental humanities. The book is the first of its kind to assess some of Murdoch's poems, seen as early articulation of the environmental imagination that finds recurrent expression in her novels, philosophical writings and personal journals throughout her writing life. This book offers a significant entry point for a new research direction in Murdoch studies by explicating her unique perspective on the natural world.

Lucy Oulton is a Research Associate at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre, University of Chichester, UK. She is an Editor of the Iris Murdoch Review, to which she has also contributed.