Sontag's Thoughts On The Relationship Between Literature And Morality

Susan Sontag was the most controversial female intellectual in the United States in the 1960 s.Her series of criticisms in the appeals and reflections of literature,photography,film and other fields of literature have made her idol-like light for forty years.This thesis attempts to analyze the relationship between literary and morality embodied in Sontag's literary works under the American social background.In Sontag's literary works,we can clearly see that her critique of traditional literary morality and the efforts to liberate people from traditional aesthetic concepts.She opposed the deep excavation and interpretation of the content of the work by traditional artistic concepts and oppose the art work as the carrier of moral preaching.She opposed the dualistic opposition between rational and perceptual,content and form.What she advocated was that people should pay more attention to the forms in art works.All she tried to do was restoring and mobilizing people's sensibility.She thought people should experience the art work with all themselves' heart instead of giving the art works too much moral meanings.Sontag's criticism of traditional literary and artistic morality has subverted the morality which has occupied the mainstream culture of the West for a long time.Perhaps some of her ideas were too radical,but there is no deny that the critical wisdom which emerges from them is beyond doubt.The study of Sontag's thought on the relationship between literature,art and morality is also of great significance to the development of our cultural industry.