Dante in the Essays of Susan Sontag

American author and essayist Susan Sontag cites Dante and his Divine Comedy in a number of her essays. In her famous “Notes on ‘Camp’,” the Divine Comedy is referenced as part of “the pantheon of high culture: truth, beauty, and seriousness” (1966, 286). In “Against Interpretation,” Sontag states: “Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to design works of art so that they might be experienced on several levels. Now it is not” (1966, 13).

Sontag published “Notes on ‘Camp’” in 1964, but the essay was republished, along with “Against Interpretation,” in her 1966 collection Against Interpretation.