The first arrival of camp literary style in Latin America

Abstract

This article proposes the novel De sobremesa, written by the Colombia author José Asunción Silva, as exemplar of camp.  Furthermore, De sobremesa marks the arrival of camp aesthetics in Latin America becoming the first of its kind. Nevertheless, critics have overseen the camp element presented in Silva’s work; thus, only being able to conceptualize this nvel as modernist and as an exemplar of the so called “novela de artista” (artist novel).  Through the scope of camp (particularly premises such as parody and humour), I identify a series of characteristics that make of De sobremesa a campy text, and therefore, this novel can be part of a queer literary legacy.