The Time of the Angels was heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and likewise contrasts the Apollonian world of reason, clarity and morality with the Dionysian realm of irrationality, emotionalism and formlessness. Murdoch portrays this conflict in her characterisations of the two male protagonists, Marcus Fisher, a headmaster who is a Platonist and writer of a Nietzschean-style treatise on moral philosophy entitled “Morality in a World without God” (19), and his older brother Carel Fisher, an Anglican cleric who professes “to be the priest of no God” (182). In this novel, Murdoch plays out the central concern of her moral philosophy, namely the search for meaning in a world without

This article in full comprises 2071 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

Published 09 February 2004

Citation: Grimshaw, Tammy. "The Time of the Angels". The Literary Encyclopedia. 9 February 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10025, accessed 20 November 2009.]