In matters of taste, there can be no disputes. Elements of Camp in Fráňa Šrámek’s play »Léto«

Abstract

In this sketch I am going to focus on the presence of elements of Camp aesthetics in the Fráňa Šrámek’s drama Léto, written and staged in 1915. Dandyism became popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th century in Czech culture and it would be the most crucial reference point to the Campy attitude. As a „local text” of the Czech decadentism, it took a place of bohemianism. In this sketch I understand Camp as a type of aesthetic avant-garde sensu largo, based on democratic tendency and on a fight against the given taste, analogues in many regards to the phenomenon it is against.