In the following essay excerpt, German identifies and discusses the relevance of allusion in Under the Net.

In one of her essays, Irish Murdoch expresses her belief in the importance of details in the novel by citing a remark of Tolstoi's: "Strip the best novels of our time of their details and what will remain?" Miss Murdoch is convinced that the best novels are not neat symbolic works but those written in the manner of Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot and Tolstoi, novels which, while avoiding the purely journalistic, are still richly endowed with details. Her reason for praising this type of novel is not simply that such works can operate more powerfully upon the reader's imagination, but primarily that they are in accord with the nature of the world—contingent, messy, full of disorderly particulars. Consequently, Miss Murdoch's own novels are copiously endowed with details...