 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Iris Murdoch |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Hokusai |
| Language | English |
| Genre | philosophical novel |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1978 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 502 pp |
| ISBN | 0-670-62651-1 |
| OCLC | 4136290 |
| 823/.9/14 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.M974 Sd PR6063.U7 |
The Sea, The Sea is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1978, it was her nineteenth novel. It won the 1978 Booker Prize.
The Sea, The Sea is a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a self-satisfied playwright and director as he begins to write his memoirs. Murdoch's novel exposes the motivations that drive his character – the vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Charles Arrowby, its central figure, decides to withdraw from the world and live in seclusion in a house by the sea. While there, he encounters his first love, Mary Hartley Fitch, whom he has not seen since his love affair with her as an adolescent. Although she is almost unrecognisable in old age, and outside his theatrical world, he becomes obsessed with her, idealising his former relationship with her and attempting to persuade her to elope with him. His inability to recognise the egotism and selfishness of his own romantic ideals is at the heart of the novel. After the farcical and abortive kidnapping of Mrs. Fitch by Arrowby, he is left to mull over her rejection in a self-obsessional and self-aggrandising manner over the space of several chapters. "How much, I see as I look back, I read into it all, reading my own dream text and not looking at the reality... Yes of course I was in love with my own youth... Who is one's first love?" [1]
Iris Murdoch's biographer Peter J. Conradi gives Xenophon as the ultimate source of the title. [2] According to Xenophon's Anabasis, "The Sea! The Sea!" ( Thalatta! Thalatta! ) was the shout of exultation given by the roaming 10,000 Greeks when, in 401 BC, they caught sight of the Black Sea from Mount Theches in Trebizond and realised they were saved from death. Conradi states that the direct source of the title is Paul Valéry's poem Le Cimetiere Marin (The Graveyard by the Sea). A line in the poem's first stanza quotes the Greeks' shouts: "La mer, la mer, toujours recommencėe" (The Sea, the sea, forever restarting). [3] Murdoch refers to the poem in several of her books, and this stanza appears in full at the end of chapter 4 in her 1963 novel The Unicorn . [4]
The work is dedicated to the archaeologist and academic Rosemary Cramp, to whom Murdoch was tutor at St Anne's. [5]
A four-part adaptation of The Sea, The Sea by Richard Crane, directed by Faynia Williams appeared as the Classic Serial on BBC Radio 3 in 1993. The actors included John Wood as Charles Arrowby, Joyce Redman as Hartley Fitch, with Siân Phillips, Sam Crane & Peter Kelly. Episode 3 included an interview with Iris Murdoch.
A two-part adaptation of The Sea, The Sea by Robin Brooks appeared on BBC Radio 4 in August 2015. The actors included Jeremy Irons as Charles Arrowby, Maggie Steed as Hartley Fitch, and Simon Williams as James Arrowby. [6]
The book won Murdoch the 1978 Booker Prize.[ citation needed ] In 2022, the novel was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. [7]
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Under the Net is a 1954 novel by Iris Murdoch. It was Murdoch's first published novel. Set in London, it is the story of a struggling young writer, Jake Donaghue. Its mixture of the philosophical and the picaresque has made it one of Murdoch's most popular novels.
The Red and the Green is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1965, it was her ninth novel. It is set in Dublin during the week leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916, and is her only historical novel. Its characters are members of a complexly inter-related Anglo-Irish family who differ in their religious affiliations and in their views on the relations between England and Ireland.
The Ten Thousand were a force of mercenary units, mainly Greeks, employed by Cyrus the Younger to attempt to wrest the throne of the Persian Empire from his brother, Artaxerxes II. Their march to the Battle of Cunaxa and back to Greece was recorded by Xenophon, one of their leaders, in his work Anabasis.
Sparkling Cyanide is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1945 under the title of Remembered Death and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in the December of the same year under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6).
Rosemary Tonks was an English poet and author. After publishing two poetry collections, six novels, and pieces in numerous media outlets, she disappeared from the public eye following her conversion to Fundamentalist Christianity in the 1970s; little was known about her life past that point, until her death.
The Last Unicorn is a fantasy novel by American author Peter S. Beagle and published in 1968, by Viking Press in the U.S. and The Bodley Head in the U.K. It follows the tale of a unicorn, who believes she is the last of her kind in the world and undertakes a quest to discover what has happened to the other unicorns. It has sold more than six million copies worldwide since its original publication, and has been translated into at least twenty-five languages.
Thálatta! Thálatta! or Thálassa! Thálassa! was the cry of joy when the roaming Ten Thousand Greeks saw Euxeinos Pontos from Mount Theches (Θήχης) near Trebizond, after participating in Cyrus the Younger's failed march against the Persian Empire in the year 401 BC. The mountain was only a five-day march away from the friendly coastal city Trapezus. The story is told by Xenophon in his Anabasis. The date of the incident itself is believed to be in the early months of 400 BC.
A Fairly Honourable Defeat is a novel by the British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch. Published in 1970, it was her thirteenth novel.
The Bell is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1958, it was her fourth novel. It is set in a lay religious community situated next to an enclosed community of Benedictine nuns in Gloucestershire.
Dame Rosemary Jean Cramp, was a British archaeologist and academic specialising in the Anglo-Saxons. She was the first female professor appointed at Durham University and was Professor of Archaeology from 1971 to 1990. She served as president of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 2001 to 2004.
The Unicorn is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1963, it was her seventh novel.
The Message to the Planet is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1989, it was her twenty-fourth novel.
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The Nice and the Good is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1968, it was her eleventh novel. The Nice and the Good was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize.
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Henry and Cato is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1976, it was her eighteenth novel.
An Accidental Man is a novel by Iris Murdoch, which was published in 1971. It was her fourteenth novel.
The Time of the Angels is a philosophical novel by British novelist Iris Murdoch. First published in 1966, it was her tenth novel. The novel centres on Carel Fisher, an eccentric Anglican priest who is the rector of a London church which was destroyed by bombing during World War II. Fisher denies the existence of God and the possibility of human goodness in a post-theistic world. The novel, which has elements of Gothic fiction, received mixed reviews on its publication.
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist is a book by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1953 by Bowes & Bowes of Cambridge, it was Murdoch's first book and the first book about Jean-Paul Sartre's work to be published in English.