A Shadow of Truth : Honor Klein in Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head

KAŠPÁRKOVÁ, Barbora. A Shadow of Truth : Honor Klein in Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head. In 'Gender and Trauma' : The Eighth International Conference on Iris Murdoch, 1-2 September, 2017, Chichester University, UK. 2017.

Basic information

• Original name: A Shadow of Truth : Honor Klein in Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head
• Authors: KAŠPÁRKOVÁ, Barbora (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: 'Gender and Trauma' : The Eighth International Conference on Iris Murdoch, 1-2 September, 2017, Chichester University, UK, 2017.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60206 Specific literatures
• Country of publisher: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/17:00097528
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: Iris Murdoch; Honor Klein; Psychoanalysis; Specter; A Severed Head
• Tags: rivok

Abstract

Iris Murdoch’s plots offer a deep insight into human relationships. The reader is repeatedly confronted with various traumatic experiences undergone by characters’ sexual obsessions, ignorance, lies, egoism, desire. Trauma is usually caused by sudden recognition / knowledge: main characters are confronted with something s/he was not aware of or did not want to see – and so is the reader. This unwanted and gained knowledge may send the character(s) into anxiety and even death or suicide. This presentation focuses on Murdoch’s A Severed Head (1961). This early novel symbolizes an apt example of convoluted relationships that appear hilarious in a superficial reading. A close reading, however, reveals the suffering triggered by the behaviour of the central characters. The most mysterious and murky female protagonist, the sexually ambivalent Honor Klein, deploys a wide range of possible interpretations. Honor’s powerful figure is like an axis around which the rest of the characters rotate. The question is, nonetheless, if she stands for a real figure. The presentation argues that this pivotal character is not a real person but a dreamy and ghostly concentration of elements in relation with the protagonist Martin Lynch-Gibbon. Honor Klein is a force, is suspicion, fear. This character is not in truth real, but it seems to be an external projection of Martin’s subconscious imaginary fears and trauma. She is the ghost of a repeated trauma, she is his analyst, confronting Martin with a veiled and suppressed knowledge, giving him, at the end of the narrative the force to overcome a series of failed relationships. She has a similar narrative function as Shakespeare’s ghosts in Macbeth, Hamlet or Julius Caesar. The presentation will focus on the analysis of those passages in which the narrator is confronted with Honor’s knowledge-power.

Links

• MUNI/A/1065/2016, interní kód MU: Name: Profilace výzkumných zaměření v anglofonní lingvistické a literární vědě II (Acronym: VZALL2)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A