In fifty-eight numbered notes, Sontag defines and defends Camp as a sensibility — a taste for the exaggerated, the artificial, and the failed-seriousness of things — tracing it through opera, film, furniture, and literature.
Books mentioned in Notes on Camp (15)
Iliad by Homer: “By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, Middlemarch, the paintings of Rembrandt...”
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James: “...it is the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove) that is responsible for the large element of Camp in his writings.”
The Awkward Age by Henry James: “Same passage as The Wings of the Dove above.”
The Europeans by Henry James: “Same passage as The Wings of the Dove above.”
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: “By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, Middlemarch, the paintings of Rembrandt, Chartres, the poetry of Donne, The Divine Comedy, Beethoven's quartets...”
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious: “The absence of this love is the reason why such kitsch items as Peyton Place (the book) and the Tishman Building aren't Camp.”
Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater: “(Models: Des Esseintes in Huysmans' À Rebours, Marius the Epicurean, Valéry's Monsieur Teste.)”
Saint Genet by Jean-Paul Sartre: “Sartre's gloss on this in Saint Genet is: 'Elegance is the quality of conduct which transforms the greatest amount of being into appearing.'”
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: “...this conservatism is reflected in The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
As You Like It by William Shakespeare: “Why is the atmosphere of Shakespeare's comedies (As You Like It, etc.) not epicene, while that of Der Rosenkavalier is?”
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet: “The Camp ideas in Our Lady of the Flowers are maintained too grimly, and the writing itself is too successfully elevated and serious, for Genet's books to be Camp.”
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare: “Titus Andronicus and Strange Interlude are almost Camp, or could be played as Camp.”
Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill: “Titus Andronicus and Strange Interlude are almost Camp, or could be played as Camp.”
The World in the Evening by Christopher Isherwood: “Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954), it has hardly broken into print.”
The Dehumanization of Art by José Ortega y Gasset: “When Ortega y Gasset wrote his famous essay The Dehumanization of Art in the early 1920s...”