The Pornographic Imagination
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The Pornographic Imagination is a nobrow essay by Susan Sontag first published in book form in Styles of Radical Will. It had been originally published two years earlier in the Partisan Review of spring 1967.
The subject is erotic literature and Sontag contends that five French literary works are not 'just' pornography but literary fiction and thus genuine literature. Although the term paraliterature had not been coined at the time of its writing (we have to wait 17 years for Fredric Jameson to do that), the connection between science fiction and erotic fiction makes this essay one of the first defenses of the nobrow or paraliterary category.
Her 'case' is based on these five novels:
- L'Histoire d'O (1954) - Pauline Réage
- Histoire de l'oeil (1928) - Georges Bataille
- Madame Edwarda (1937) - Georges Bataille
- Trois filles de leur mère (1926) - Pierre Louÿs
- L'Image (1956) - Catherine Robbe-Grillet
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