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Sexual Personae: Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Paperback)

Sexual Personae: Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson Cover Image
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Description


The fiery, provocative, and unparalleled work of feminist art criticism that launched the exceptional career of one of our most important public intellectuals—"a remarkable book, at once outrageous and compelling, fanatical and brilliant.... One must be awed by [Paglia's] vast energy, erudition and wit" (The Washington Post).

Is Emily Dickinson “the female Sade”? Is Donatello’s David a bit of pedophile pornography? What is the secret kinship between Byron and Elvis Presley, between Medusa and Madonna? How do liberals and feminists—as well as conservatives—fatally misread human nature? This audacious and omnivorously learned work of guerrilla scholarship offers nothing less than a unified-field theory of Western culture, high and low, since Egyptians invented beauty—making a persuasive case for all art as a pagan battleground between male and female, form and chaos, civilization and daemonic nature.

With 47 photographs.

About the Author


CAMILLE PAGLIA is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. A regular contributor to Salon.com, she is the author of Glittering Images; Break, Blow, Burn; Sexual Personae; Sex, Art, and American Culture; and Vamps & Tramps.

Praise For…


"A remarkable book, at once outrageous and compelling, fanatical and brilliant.... One must be awed by [Paglia's] vast energy, erudition and wit." —The Washington Post

Sexual Personae [is] an enormous sensation of a book, in all the better senses of ‘sensation.’ There is no book comparable in scope, stance, design or insight.” —Harold Bloom

“The ability to infuriate both antagonists in an ideological struggle is often a sign of a first-rate book.... [Paglia] is a conspicuously gifted writer ... and an admirably close reader with a hard core of common sense.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Paglia marshals a vast array of ... cultural materials with an authorial voice derived from sixties acid-rock lead guitar.... Close to poetry.” —Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces

“This book is a red comet in a smog-filled sky.... Brilliant.” —The Nation

Product Details
ISBN: 9780679735793
ISBN-10: 0679735798
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: August 20th, 1991
Pages: 736
Language: English
Series: Vintage