Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince: a valorization of metafiction as a virtuous aesthetic practice

Vol.40,No.2(2014)

Sara Soleimani Karbalaei

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2014-2-6

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/131921

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Abstract
Having a self-conscious narrator who is obsessed by the question of art-truth relationship, The Black Prince is the paradigm of metafiction among Iris Murdoch's works. A discourse about the problems of writing fiction, the novel actually exposes the ontological status of all literary fiction, i.e. its quasi-referentiality, its indeterminacy and its existence as a linguistic world. This paper argues that more than being a thematic concern, metafiction is the integral part of The Black Prince whose fragmented form mirrors the complexity of reality. It concludes that such a full-fledged metafictional project does not resonate with the anti-fictional convictions but aspires to validate metafiction as the perfect moral form of fiction.

Keywords:
metafiction; truth; art; self-conscious narrator; reality

Pages:
91–107
References

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