The significance of space in Iris Murdoch’s "The Unicorn" as a twentieth-century Irish Gothic novel
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Date
2014
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
During the twentieth century almost all literary genres came back to prominence in different and
alternative forms. The Gothic is no exception to this phenomenon as many a writer made an attempt at
using this eighteenth-century genre once again, but adding to it some contemporary elements. Consequently,
an abundance of new techniques have been introduced to Gothic fiction to evoke the feeling
of horror and terror among the more and more demanding readers of modern times. Still, some writers
prefer to return to the traditional concept of the Gothic – as does Iris Murdoch in her novel The Unicorn.
The purpose of this article is to analyse the text from the perspective of the Irish Gothic. Those
features of the genre which are traditional as well as local are going to be discussed in the context of
space as the dominating aspect of the novel. The typical Irish landscape abounding in marshes, bogs
and the sea will be contrasted with the inner space of the house, and its resemblance to the old Victorian
mansions popular among the Anglo-Irish ascendancy of nineteenth-century Ireland. In what
follows, the paper aims at showing how Murdoch’s skilful play with the spatial differentiation between
the inside and the outside dislodges other more universal issues, such as the question of freedom,
of social taboos and of the different anxieties still present in Irish society today.
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Irish fiction, Iris Murdoch, Gothic, big house novel
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 49.4 (2014), pp. 5-20
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0081-6272