A New Historicist Reading Of Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was a renowned American author, literary theorist andpolitical activist in the twentieth century. She was hailed as one of the most important femaleintellectuals in the West together with Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt. She was alsoknown as the “American public conscience”. The Volcano Lover (1992), her third novel andalso her favorite one, is a best-selling historical novel. It is about a scandalous love triangleamong William Hamilton, a British envoy to Naples, his second wife Emma Hamilton andBritish naval hero Lord Nelson in the eighteenth-century Naples.The Volcano Lover has attracted the attention of numerous critics and scholars both athome and abroad as soon as it was published. Previous studies are mainly from suchperspectives as modernity, narrative strategies, female images and the camp style. Theemergence of New Historicism is accompanied by “the turn toward history” in literarycriticism in the1980s along with the cultural return. The novel was conceived when NewHistoricism was in the advancing period. It shows strong flavor of New Historicism throughthe juxtaposition of history and fiction and by turning the grand narrative into discontinuousand fragmented histories. Sontag’s unique way of dealing with history in fiction and therelationship between history and fiction coincides with that of New Historicism. Therefore,this thesis is an attempt to employ New Historicism’s important concepts “the historicity oftexts and the textuality of history” to analyze Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover.Sontag’s historical and textual consciousness makes her just like a new historicist. Shereconstructs histories of the eighteenth-century Naples from a modern perspective andrestores the historical “truth”. Her aesthetic thoughts are perfectly reflected in the process.Hence, a new historicist reading of The Volcano Lover can throw some light on SusanSontag herself and her works. The thesis is composed of three chapters besides an introduction and a conclusion.It starts with a general introduction to Susan Sontag and her works, especially her thirdnovel The Volcano Lover, the literature review, and the structure of the thesis.Chapter One deals with the theoretical framework of the thesis. It traces back to theorigin of New Historicism and its main concerns, the relation of literature and history, and therelation of history and text.Chapter Two explores the historicity of The Volcano Lover by following “the historicityof texts.” Sontag does not simply demonstrate the turbulent historical circumstances of theeighteenth-century Naples, but reconstructs the histories in the eighteenth-century Naples.The grand narrative turns into discontinuous and fragmented histories. She deconstructs theheroic images of the King and the hero and refashions real historical figures, which showsSontag’s revisionist view of history. Besides, she metaphorically expresses her views onhistory through the image of Mount Vesuvius.Chapter Three concentrates on the textuality of The Volcano Lover by following “thetextuality of history.” Through intertextuality with pre-existing texts, Sontag demonstratesthat we can only get the trace of the past through texts. She mixes the historical with thefictional and crosses the boundaries between history and fiction by connecting historicalfigures with fictional ones. This part also analyzes Sontag’s narrative strategies inconstructing histories in the novel, entertaining digressions, anecdotes and giving voices tothe marginalized.The final part summarizes the thesis. The Volcano Lover is a combination of “history”and “text”, in which Sontag erases the boundary of history and text and reconstructs histories.The novel reflects Sontag’s historical consciousness.