The Absent Satirist: The Strange Case of Muriel Spark
Keywords:
Muriel Spark, Scottish literature, twentieth-century British literature, satire, parody, duality, devil worshipAbstract
Based on her early novels, Muriel Spark was pigeonholed by her contemporaries as a Catholic satirist committed to eternal truths. However, Spark took an increasing delight in elusiveness in her later novels, refusing to confer value on her texts or insert an easily recognizable moral preoccupation. This paper is an attempt to discuss whether Spark’s cool, unengaged quality and ostentatious lack of interest in upholding moral values may or may not enable satire within the confines of its traditional predicament. Since Spark came very close to contradicting many of her previous claims and findings during her dynamic development, I am obliged to utilize novels from different periods, The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), along with The Abbess of Crewe (1974), to find out whether any method can be derived from her apparent inconsistency.
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