Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Embodied Mind and Vegetal Agency: The Good Apprentice
Lucy Oulton
Iris Murdoch’s Wild Imagination 2025 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-87833-6_5 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Animism Environmental philosophy Material ecocriticism Agential realism Affect theory Sensory body Embodied perception Epiphany Attention Vegetal agency |
| Key points | Argues that Murdoch's depictions of human interactions with landscape in The Good Apprentice suggest an affective experience of body in landscape and that neglected spaces in her work become rewilded, constituting an agentive force described as 'the vegetal on the creep.' |
Abstract
Iris Murdoch’s Wild Imagination returns to the land to focus more intently on Murdoch’s depictions of key moments of human interaction in landscape. With reference to The Good Apprentice, chapter 5 begins by charting Murdoch’s fascination, as a young philosopher, with the role of the body and sensory awareness as essential precursors to thought. It considers Murdoch’s early interest in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and examines the degree to which his ontology of ‘wild being’ might be applied in any practical or meaningful sense. It assesses interactions between character and animistic landscape in the novel in order to scrutinize the collision of agential forces that seems to occur at these powerful moments. Murdoch’s portrayals of such interactions are suggestive of the affective experience of body in landscape that is recognized as critically significant by today’s affect theorists. An associated theoretical discourse, adopted by practitioners of material ecocriticism, constitutes vegetal agency which asserts the agential force of nature. Such notions of vegetal agency inform discussions of how Murdoch often pictures spaces, neglected or abandoned by their human inhabitants, that take on an overwhelming sense of rewilding, constituting an agentive force: the vegetal on the creep.
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