What, then, does Sontag mean by “interpretation”? Sontag was among the first critics to write about the intersection between 'high' and 'low' art forms, and to give them equal value as valid topics, shown here in her epoch-making pieces 'Notes on Camp' and 'Against Interpretation'. Susan Sontag created a sensation in the mid-1960’s with her essay “Against Interpretation.” Although she made it clear that she was not against all interpretation of … The essay "The Death of Tragedy" takes a broad step back and examines the state of the dramatic form of theater itself and its relationship to the Western self through the cipher of Lionel Abel's delimitation of the genre of tragedy and his idea of metatheater. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays. Get 3 for the price of 2 . Though she claims that interpretation can be “stifling”, making art comfortable and “manageable” and thus degrading the artist’s original intention, Sontag equally presents a solution to the dilemma she sees as an abundance of interpretation on content. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Susan Sontag in her essay “Against Interpretation” focuses on what an interpretation really is. Les meilleures offres pour Sontag, Susan-Against Interpretation BOOK NEUF sont sur eBay Comparez les prix et les spécificités des produits neufs et d'occasion Pleins d'articles en livraison gratuite! Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. In an essay on performance art and proto-flash mobs, "Happenings: An Art of Radical Juxtaposition" Sontag examines that work of performance art pioneer Allan Kaprow and places his work and legacy in conversation with important historical antecedents such as the Surrealist movement. Though they bear the stamp of their time, Sontag was remarkably prescient; her project of analysing popular culture as well as high culture, the Doors as well as Dostoevsky, is now common practice throughout the educated world. A Genealogy of Queer Theory. Nothing was rejected in classical interpretation. Get it as soon as Mon, Nov 16. Against Interpretation is an essay written by American critic Susan Sontag. Susan Sontag’s seminal mid-60s essay has come up several times at this site. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays. Against Interpretation by . Sontag is strongly averse to what she considers to be contemporary interpretation, that is, an overabundance of importance placed upon the content or meaning of an artwork rather than being keenly alert to the sensuous aspects of a given work and developing a descriptive vocabulary for how it appears and how it does whatever it does. It should help orient us to better understand a work. In "Piety Without Content" Sontag harshly and rigorously critiques recent trends in religious studies scholarship as seen through the work of Walter Kaufmann. Against Interpretation Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. [Susan Sontag] Against interpretation and other es(BookZZ.org) She believes that interpretation of the modern style has a particular “taming” effect: reducing the freedom of a subjective response and placing limitations or certain rules upon a responder. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "On Style," and the eponymous essay "Against Interpretation." Where this type of interpretation was seen to resolve conflict between past and present by revamping an art work and maintaining a certain level of respect and honour, Sontag believes that the modern style of interpretation has lost sensitivity and rather strives to “excavate...destroy”[2] a piece of art. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays | Susan Sontag | download | B–OK. This discussion will be chaired by F.… To Sontag, modernity means a loss of sensory experience and she believes (in corroboration with her theory of the damaging nature of criticism) that the pleasure of art is diminished by such overload of the senses. Finally, in her famous "Notes on 'Camp,'" Sontag outlines her seminal theory of camp as a type of aesthetic understanding that emphasizes, style, exaggeration, and theatricality in forms of mode art. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. "[7], In their introduction to Critique and Postcritique (2017), Rita Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker argue that the title essay from Sontag's collection has played an important role in the field of postcritique, a movement within literary criticism and cultural studies that attempts to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. The modern style of interpretation is particularly despised by Sontag in relation to the previous classical style of interpretation that sought to “bring artworks up to date”, to meet modern interests and apply allegorical readings. Against Interpretation is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. Part 1 contains two of her more conceptual or theoretical essays, "Against Interpretation" and "On Style." Sontag also refers to the contemporary world as one of “overproduction... material plentitude”,[4] where one's physical senses have been dulled and annihilated by mass production and complex interpretation to the extent that appreciation of the form of art has been lost. In these pieces, Sontag argues for what she calls an erotics of art to replace dominant modes of interpretation in cultural criticism and makes a modest plea for critic and art appreciators alike to pay closer attention the ways that style is present (or absent) in art works. She received her B.A. Summary: Susan Sontag's essays Against Interpretation, On Photography and Illness as Metaphor have established her as one of the leading commentators on contemporary culture. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. Get Against Interpretation from Amazon.com. Kindle $11.99 $ 11. This seminal essay argues The essay “Notes on ‘Camp’ ” is among the first to consider a specifically gay discourse. The final two essays of the book contain some of Sontag's most significant and influential contributions to the practice of cultural criticism. Against Interpretation Susan Sontag The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. Two essays near the end of this section discuss recent transgressive or avant-garde films, Jack Smith's controversial "Flaming Creatures" and Alain Resnais' "Muriel." In the horror films, we have the mad or obsessed or misguided scientist who pursues his experiments against good advice to the contrary, creates a monster or monsters, and is himself destroyed—often recognizing his folly himself, and dying in the successful effort to destroy his own creation. In each essay and with each individual Sontag selects and reviews a single work that is, on her reading, especially representative of the author's entire body of work. the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) "Going to theater, etc." The book was a finalist for the Arts and Letters category of the National Book Award [1]. That is, to approach art works with a strong emphasis on form, to “reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.”[5], In a contemporary review of the book, Benjamin DeMott of The New York Times praised Against Interpretation as "a vivid bit of living history here and now, and at the end of the sixties it may well rank among the invaluable cultural chronicles of these years." In "One Culture and the New Sensibility," Sontag makes an original argument for the function art and art criticism as a modifier of human consciousness, a sensory stimulant, and a gateway for increased receptivity to human experience. She talks about the past with the present interpretation. At times this eagerness lapses deliberately into inarticulateness, as in her celebrated essay on … Strangely, for a critic who produced Notes on Camp in the same year, she seems to misunderstand irony, which is … "Against Interpretation" is Sontag's influential essay within Against Interpretation and Other Essays that discusses the divisions between two different kinds of art criticism and theory: that of formalist interpretation, and that of content-based interpretation. "Against Interpretation" is the direct statement of this view. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. Unlike most literary critics, Sontag believes that literary criticism is growing increasingly destructive towards the very works of art that they, supposedly, so … [SYMPOSIUM] BOOK CLUB #10 Sontag: Against Interpretation Friday, 9 September 2016, 6:00pm – 8:30pm The Field, 385 Queens Road, London SE14 5HD Rail/Overground: New Cross Gate, Queens Road Peckham Chaired by F. D. Free, please book your place In September we are reading Susan Sontag’s essay Against Interpretation. He added, "...the essays are unfailingly stimulating. Find books The greatest danger of Against Interpretation is that Sontag is willfully blind to the coercive facts of culture, to semiotics, propaganda, the insinuations of power in culture. Stress the modernity here, since she is distinguished less by a decided or passionate point of view (compare her as a film critic, for example, with two such disparate personalities as James Agee and Kenneth Tynan) than by an eagerness to explore anything new. Susan Sontag continues to explain how she believes the idea of interpreting art originated. Beginning with a discussion of the problem of interpretation and hermeneutics in cultural criticism, Susan Sontag, herself an American critic, argues for a mode of aesthetic appreciation that draws on classical understandings of formalism, draws special attention to a work of art's sense of style, and proceeds with an unprecedented sensitivity to sensory excitation and an openness to experience. by Susan Sontag | Aug 25, 2001. everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Against Interpretation. reads like a short journal of Sontag's theater and movie going experiences in the summer of 1964, examining figures as diverse as James Baldwin, Arthur Miller, and Stanley Kubrick, and highlighting the importance of single cinematic and theatrical works like Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" and Peter Brook's production of "King Lear.". In the first two essays, Sontag tasks herself with introducing the influential French film directors Robert Bresson and Jean-Luc Godard to her American audience by way of a few of their more accessible works. The key French ideas are all here. In this way, Sontag asserts that inevitably, the modern style of interpretation separates form and content in a manner that damages an artwork and one's own sensorial appreciation of a piece. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and … Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. Susan Sontag (/ ˈ s ɒ n t æ ɡ /; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist. Available instantly. It includes the groundbreaking essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, … Finally, "The Imagination of Disaster" discusses and critically evaluates the science fiction genre in film, while "A Note on Novels and Films" draws interesting parallels between the novel and the cinema as influential aesthetic forms while resisting the temptation to obscure or gloss over their essential differences. The chief commodity of Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation, according to its author and her reviewers, is a modern sensibility. I’ve been busy rereading it since Xmas, and want to take this chance to set down some thoughts regarding it. Susan Sontag: free download. (Cf. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and made her name as one of the most incisive thinkers of our time. Metaphorical interpretation started as an attempt to make old work stand the test of time. 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