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In this essay I intend to place a chapter of Iris Murdoch's philosophical writing alongside one of her novels, juxtaposing her piece on Derrida and Structuralism" from her book Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, with her novel The Black Prince, published in 1973. Though Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals was published in 1992, some 19 years after her novel, Murdoch tells us that she read Derrida's early book Writing and Difference when it was published in 1967, and was "impressed and disturbed by it" (MGM, p. 291). As will become clear, since that time she continually reflected on his works, which she calls "brilliant" and "difficult" (MGM, p. 291), and so it is not an anachronism to suggest that there is some echo of Derrida's thought in her 1973 novel.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137271365_7

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