Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Comparative Literature

Advisor

Nancy K. Miller

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities | Classical Literature and Philology | Comparative Literature | Film and Media Studies | French and Francophone Literature | German Literature | Literature in English, British Isles | Literature in English, North America | Modern Languages

Keywords

Sontag, Woolf, Carson, Gadamer, Interpretation, Visual Art

Abstract

In “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag argues for an erotics of art in art criticism in place of hermeneutics. In this thesis, I examine erotics of art, a focus on form and experiencing art instead of exclusively on content, in practice. Drawing on other essays by Sontag, specifically the essay “Godard” in comparison with the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s own filmic criticism in Breathless, criticism according to an erotics of art becomes a new artwork itself. Subsequently, I present a definition of erotic through Anne Carson and Roland Barthes and juxtapose the term with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The comparison ultimately undoes the supposed binary. In terms of art criticism then, I argue that the language of erotics of art is ekphrasis – making new art from existing art, which Anne Carson further applies in her poetry. Then I present Virginia Woolf as an ekphrastic writer within several genres. Woolf both critiques art explicitly in her essays that center around the experience of viewing a work of art, and she transforms mental images of memories into visual art through her pictorial descriptions. I argue that her novel The Waves combines the multiple levels of erotics of art criticism through ekphrasis in the depiction of different works of art, and in her writing process.

This work is embargoed and will be available for download on Monday, June 01, 2026

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