Phil 518: Twentieth-Century Philosophy
The fiction and non-fiction of Iris Murdoch

"My imagination lives near the sea and under the sea," by Carrie Jenkins, oil on canvas

W1, 2025

Draft Syllabus

This course takes place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəýəm (Musqueam) People.

This course offers a deep dive into Iris Murdoch’s fiction and non-fiction. We will study a curated selection of Murdoch’s novels, paired with selections from her non-fictional writing on related topics. Murdoch’s own views on the relationship between philosophy and literature will form a backdrop for these investigations. We will contextualize Murdoch’s work by reading a selection of the literary and philosophical works which significantly influenced her, as well as secondary texts and bibliographical sources. Students may elect to prepare their final submission for this course in the form of a term paper, a short story, or a combination of the two.