The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

Published 1973 · 432 pages · 112,513 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is The Black Prince to read?

The Black Prince scores 62 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
Murdoch's vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
Murdoch's elaborate prose.
Abstraction: 68 out of 100
Art, love, truth.
Information density: 55 out of 100
London literary.
Narrative indirection: 65 out of 100
Unreliable memoir.
Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
Hamlet, black prince.
Ironic distance: 62 out of 100
Multiple postscripts.
Resolution withholding: 62 out of 100
Truth contested.
Structural complexity: 62 out of 100
Memoir with postscripts.

How The Black Prince is regarded

The Black Prince holds a literary regard score of 74 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where The Black Prince sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (208 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The Black Prince scores 80 out of 100. A second mythos, comedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic (shading Ironic)
I am fifty-eight years old. I am a writer. "A writer" is indeed the simplest and also the most accurate general description of me.
Symbol: Formal
Mythos: Tragic Pathos (Irony phase 4) (irony iv)
In sentencing me to life imprisonment the judge gave general satisfaction. It was a mean crime of an unusual pure kind: to kill one's friend out of envy of his talents.
Genre: Confession + Novel + Anatomy
Postscripts by Dramatis Personae... It is my pleasure and privilege to add a critical epilogue to this unusual "autobiography."

Where the story of The Black Prince takes place

  • London (Soho, Ealing, Notting Hill), a summer of the late 1960s (1965 to 1968), the main setting
  • Patara, a bungalow on the East Anglian coast (1965 to 1968)
  • Bristol maisonette (Priscilla and Roger's) (1965 to 1968)

7 things that are true of The Black Prince, with the passage for each

  1. The book opens with a foreword by an editor signed P. Loxias, who claims to be Bradley's friend and has arranged publication.

    I am in more than one way responsible for the work that follows. The author of it, my friend Bradley Pearson, has placed the arrangements for publication in my hands.

  2. Bradley is a 58-year-old retired Inspector of Taxes who has published only three books.

    I am fifty-eight years old. I am a writer.

  3. Julian cuts the string of a gas balloon from an upstairs window as Bradley and Rachel watch from the garden.

    Julian had cut the string.

  4. Bradley lies to Julian about his age, saying he is forty-six.

    The question took me horribly by surprise, but I replied instantly, "Forty-six."

  5. Priscilla attempts suicide with sleeping pills in Bradley's flat, but the bottle proves nearly harmless; she later kills herself.

    She killed herself--she took sleeping tablets--she must have had them hidden

  6. Bradley and Francis tear apart the complete works of Arnold Baffin in under ten minutes.

    It took us just under ten minutes to destroy the complete works of Arnold Baffin.

  7. The postscript claims that Bradley died in prison of cancer.

    He died in prison of a quick-growing cancer, which developed soon after he finished his book.

Scenes in The Black Prince that Frye would name

21 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
I had fallen in love with Julian. Recognition scene that turns Bradley's life.
Point of epiphany, untitled
The precious and beloved skyline of my own Jerusalem processed incessantly behind that dear mysterious head. The revolving Post Office Tower restaurant, where two worlds touch.
Hamartia, untitled
I can't come now," I said. "I can't--come--now. Get on with the arrangements--get hold of Roger Saxe Bradley hides Priscilla's death to keep Julian, the fatal misstep that undoes him.
Confession, untitled
This preludes, dear friend, my apologia, offered to you not for the first time, concerning this love story. Sustained introverted autobiographical register.
Sparagmos, untitled
I could see that the skull was appallingly dinted at the side, the darkened hair descending into the depression, as if Arnold's head had been made of wax The murdered Arnold's crushed skull is the book's demonic tearing-apart.
Pharmakos, untitled
I was condemned for being a certain awful kind of person. Bradley is expelled as scapegoat for Rachel's crime.

Books that share these scenes with The Black Prince

About the author

Iris Murdoch