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28 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
the increased visibility of the mollies around 1700, there seems to have been a
tendency to explain homosexuality by, not the cardinal sin of fornicatio, but the
cardinal sin of pride. This happened when sodomy was understood, not just as a
slippage in “normal” (heterosexual) behavior, but as a consciously willed and
repeated set of behaviors that set the self against the normative order. Like the
perverse will described by Augustine, the sodomite “turn[ed] aside from…
substance,… boasting [him]self an outcast.” It was this boastfulness (a
specifically queer pride) which most disturbed homophobic critics. From this
description of the sodomite as proud and boastful, it is only a short step to
Sontag’s definition of the homosexual as a new aristocrat.
ARISTOCRATIC EXCESS AND BOURGEOIS
CONSCIENCE
Classical statues like those of Antinous became familiar to Englanders around
1614 following the importation of artwork by virtuosi like Thomas Howard, Earl
of Arundel, the Duke of Buckingham, and even Charles I himself (Houghton
67). The virtuosi were gentlemen of leisure who compensated for the increasing
shortage of royal posts by creating new social roles for themselves as amateur
scientists and antiquarians, collectors of natural and artificial rarities, and artistic
connoisseurs (Houghton 52ff.; Stone 1965:715). Through their collections, the
virtuosi introduced into England the mannerism characteristic of courtly portraits
showing the arm set akimbo.
H.G.Koenigsberger has written that the courtly style of mannerism “could play
havoc with that most central of classical Renaissance achievements, the correct use
of perspective” (242). I suggest that, by confusing perspective, mannerism
displaced the figure from his or her proper place in a mathematically benevolent
world “view,” substituting virtuosic technique for social alignment. The
opposition to pure perspective evident in mannerist art conveyed the same
message as sprezzatura in the bodily style of aristocrats. Perspective could be
learned by any patient craftsman, and classical iconography by any student; as
with courtesy, manuals were available for these purposes. But the mannerist
gesture—like sprezzatura, like akimbo—was at once to invoke perspective and
to defer it, foregrounding style over mathematical placement.
Precisely where the virtuosi could have contributed to the revival of
aristocratic legitimacy, they were discredited as not useful. Before 1680, Samuel
Butler had described the character of an antiquarian: “He values one old
invention, that is lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the
world, though never so useful” (rpt. in Morley 324). Likewise,
A Curious Man…cares not how unuseful anything be, so it be but unuseful
and rare. …He admires subtleties about all things, because the more subtle
they are the nearer they are to nothing, and values no art but that which is
spun so thin that it is of no use at all.
(rpt. in Morley 340)