Cora MacGregor

My thesis considers how the fictional and non-fictional writings of Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch engage with issues and ideas of consciousness and interiority. Woolf and Murdoch's shared interest in the inner life and its accompany nexus of ontological, epistemological, and moral quandaries has profound implications for their literary projects. The ambivalence they both register with respect to the nature of selfhood and consciousness, the knowability of other minds, and the ethical implications of penetrating the psyche of another generates doubts about the position and responsibilities of the author, especially concerning the creation of character. My research is supervised by Dr. David Dwan.