A Sketchy Narrative Map: An Exploration Of Susan Sontag's In America From The Narrative Perspective

Susan Sontag(1933-2004),a renowned contemporary American writer and critic, is a(?)sage,female intellectual with countless enthusiasm.In addition,she is a (?)never-retreating warrior who fights against philistinism of ethical and aesth(?)c shallowness and indifference.The present thesis attempts to demonstrate the beauty of the link between the narrative art(the form)of Sontag's novel In America and its meaning presentation (the content)as well as its reception by adopting the theory of point of view as the approach.Besides "Introduction" and "Conclusion",the research contains three chapters. The first chapter is the genre criticism of In America.First,it points out that In America is a biographical novel with the characteristics of metanarrative,confession and neo-historicism.Then it makes the essential literature review and personal judgment of some narrative theories that are to be utilized in the analysis.The misconception of the genre of In America in the recent Sontag scholarship is also refuted from the angle of the narrative techniques in this chapter.The second chapter is a detailed analysis of the novel from three aspects.The first aspect is to show how Sontag effectively unfolds the plot and shows its suspense,conflict,action,and characterization via soliloquy,dialogues,reportage and letters.The second aspect is based on the active construction of fragmentary historical background of the novel.The last one emphasizes its exploration into how the narrative techniques artfully lead to a clear conception of the theme of In America-the complex relation between the force of histories and the powcr of the human will.The third chapter is the demonstration that chiefly reveals how thc specific narrative forms,diaries and stream of consciousness,successfully express that the will of Maryna continuously struggles and negotiates with the force of histories in order to obtain the self-actualization to a great extent. The thesis is an attempt to manifest systematically Sontag's exquisite narrative techniques in In America,her meditation on the complexity of the world and the human pursuit of true freedom,which will reach a sound conclusion that Sontag perfectly dissolves her meditation(the content of In America)in the poetics(narrative forms of In America).