THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF LITERARY POSTMODERNISM IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL NOVELS BY IRIS MURDOCH

The article presents the findings of a research into the epistemological background of I. Murdoch's picture of reality as related to the aesthetic principles of literary postmodernism. The concrete objects of the study are the later novels of the author, namely "The Book and the Brotherhood" (1987), "The Message to the Planet" (1989) and "The Green Knight" (1993). The contamination of the narrative text and the philosophical metatext in the novels in question gives grounds for the application of the interdisciplinary approach and the systemic methods of research. The purpose of the systemic application of the literary methods of intertextual analysis and the instruments of philosophical hermeneutics consists in identification of the synergic connotations of the two narrative aspects and the emergent synergic effect relevant to the actual problems of the article. The discursive analysis of semantic ties between the content and the formative elements of the novels under consideration makes it possible to reproduce their consolidated epic perspective and the epistemological horizon, which delimitates the boundaries of aesthetic interpretation of objects of reality. Purposeful insight into the reproduced perspective reveals the transfer of its projection to the worldview position of the literary character as long as he or she functions as the common subject of all figurative representations and cognitive activities. The further investigation of the worldview field -horizon singles out the gnoseological markers of the empiric and value -based criteria of the truth, thus revealing the dependence of the creative activity of the character on the cognition of the real world. The augmented tra jectories from a priori ideas to experienced knowledge demonstrate the author's intention to cast a link of constructive connection between modernistic priorities of egocentric subjectivity and the traditional conception of the eccentric objectivity in art. A systemic generalization of the research results leads to the logical conclusion that the writer's epistemological ideas focus on the revival of cognitive and didactic functions of literature with the purpose of complementing the artistic features of the worldview with the requirements for its holisticity and truthfulness.