718 pages
English language
Published Jan. 7, 1990 by Yale University Press.
Sexual personae.
3 stars
(2 reviews)
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson is a 1990 work about sexual decadence in Western literature and the visual arts by scholar Camille Paglia, in which she addresses major artists and writers such as Donatello, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Emily Brontë, and Oscar Wilde. Following Friedrich Nietzsche, Paglia argues that the primary conflict in Western culture is between the binary forces of the Apollonian and Dionysian, Apollo being associated with order and symmetry, and Dionysus with chaos, disorder, and nature. The book received critical reviews from numerous feminist scholars, and was praised by numerous literary critics.
Subjects
- Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- Literature, Modern -- History and criticism
- Decadence (Literary movement)
- Decadence in literature
- Paganism in literature
- Sex in literature
- Paganism in art
- Romanticism
- Sex in art
- Arts