A Study Of Susan Sontag 's Form Theory

Susan Sontag is a contemporary American writer and critic. She and Simon de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt are known as Contemporary West-the most important three female intellectuals. Although her life’s work on literary theory is not much, but it included very wide fields. Her writings included the literature, philosophy, art and life to the field of medical ethics.This dissertation attempts her most representative book Against Interpretation, On Photography and Illness as Metaphor to understand literary theory of Sontag. Against Interpretation has changed the traditional pattern of "content-form" debate, breaking the limitations of traditional literary concept, proposing a new standard for literary criticism by the style of discourse made transparent, and "erotic of art"."New sensibility" inspired by Marxist Herbert Marcuse and other Western scholars. She emphasized to highlight role of perceptual experience in art, to restore people’s instinctive feel for the most artistic ability to fight which has formed the habit of rational response."Form" of the "new" is no longer reflected in the form and content of the traditional dualism, but a bridge linking among "Against Interpretation","style" and "new sensibility". So we said the form theory of Sontag is the "new" form on.