Representing Camp: Constructing Macaroni Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Visual Satire

Authors

Freya Gowrley, University of EdinburghFollow

Author Biography

Dr Freya Gowrley is a Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Postdoctoral Research Fellow, and a Visiting Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh's History of Art department. Her research focuses on visual and material culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and North America. Her monograph, Domestic Space in Britain, c.1750-1840: Materiality, Sociability & Emotion is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic, and she has had articles published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Journal 18: a journal of eighteenth-century art and culture. She has held fellowships at Yale Centre for British Art, the Winterthur Museum, the Huntington Library, and the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin).

Abstract

This article asks how ‘Camp,’ as defined in Sontag’s 1964 essay, ‘Notes on Camp,’ might provide a valuable framework for the analysis of late eighteenth-century satirical prints, specifically those featuring images of the so-called ‘macaroni.’ Discussing a number of satirical prints and contemporary writings on the macaroni, the article reads them against Sontag’s text in order to establish its utility as a critical framework for understanding the images’ complex relationship of content, form, and function.

Keywords

camp, macaroni, satire, print culture, eighteenth-century, masculinity

Recommended Citation

Gowrley, Freya (2019) "Representing Camp: Constructing Macaroni Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Visual Satire," ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830: Vol.9: Iss.1, Article 4.
https://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.9.1.1171
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol9/iss1/4