Nature Boys: Camp Discourse in American Literature from Whitman to Wharton

Nature Boys asserts that camp, a satirical, parodic, and playful artistic practice, had multiple points of origin, some of which can be found in American literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Close examinations of works by Whitman, Twain, Bierce, Harte, and others demonstrate that camp did as much to define homosexuality as did medical science and European and American sodomites themselves.