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Critic James Wood James Wood explores the meaning of self in fiction, focusing on Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Critic James Wood explores aspects of novelistic technique through a fictional character.

Is our fictional character a coherent self? Up till now, we have assumed so. But why? The thrust of twentieth-century philosophy and cultural theory, not to mention the latest findings of neuro-biology, all work to suggest, instead, the incoherence of the self, the self's relative lack of autonomy.

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15 minutes

Broadcasts

  • Thu 24 Feb 2011 23:00
  • Thu 31 May 2012 22:45

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

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