Against unreality: A literary ethics of attention to suffering with Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and Elsa Morante

Abstract

This thesis positions literature as a privileged space for attending to suffering, examining the moral value of attention as theorised by Simone Weil and expanded by Iris Murdoch. I explore the relationship between attention and literature, establishing what I define as a ‘literary ethics of attention’. From this, I develop a framework I term ‘mystical realism’, which proposes that literature can bear ‘attentive’ witness to suffering. A case study of Elsa Morante’s novel La Storia, viewed through the lens of Murdochian philosophy of literature, serves to illustrate this idea, as the text is rooted in Weil’s concept of attention to le malheur. Through this analysis, the thesis suggests that La Storia is an example of ‘mystical’ attention to the darkest and most invisible aspects of reality, and thus a literary endeavour to restore the integrity of the real