Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson [Camille Paglia]

[Decadent] [Sexual] [Criticism]

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

Camille Paglia

Vintage Books, CT. 1991. First Vintage Books Paperback Edition. Corners dinged; creased spine; uniform yellowing, slight soiling to text block. Unmarked internally. A very good copy.

From the publisher:

"Is Emily Dickinson “the female Sade”?... 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."

Although I find the recent trend of tying your entire worldview to Paglia's literary criticism to be fraught, she is a genuinely brilliant writer with a verve and wit that demands your attention. Who else is writing 715 page long essays careening through art history, anthropology, and literary criticism? Her definitive statement.