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Iris Murdoch
(1919-99)
English novelist

Elias Canetti
(1905-94)
Bulgarian/German novelist

Studies In Comparative Literature 29

Legenda: Oxford, August 2013  
ISBN: 978-1-907975-74-5

Since the revelation of Iris Murdoch’s (1919-1999) affair with Elias Canetti (1905-1994), scholarship on their relationship has been largely biographical, focusing in particular on Canetti’s alleged role as the real-life model for some of Murdoch’s most invidious protagonists. Little research, however, has been done on the extensive common ground between the two writers’ literary projects. In this groundbreaking comparative study, Elaine Morley conducts a careful philological comparison of Murdoch’s and Canetti’s works, from their literary themes and theories to their idiosyncratic stylistic practices. Morley demonstrates that these authors were preoccupied with a common philosophical problem, and that they were in fact not only personally close, but also more intellectually allied than has been previously thought.

Elaine Morley is Lecturer in German and Comparative Literature at Queen Mary, University of London where she convenes the MA in Anglo-German Cultural Relations.