Overview

One of David Bowie's 100 favourite books ‘I read it voraciously ... it made me want to read the books ... stimulating and compelling’ Mike White, creator of The White Lotus ‘So brilliant about women, and how women in a men’s world function’ Kim Cattrall ‘Deserves a place in the canon of great books about gender’ Contrapoints ‘A crazy and brilliant survey of Western literature’ Michael Pollan’s 10 favourite books ‘Camille Paglia is a force of nature. She sees art as a defence against the chaos; now more relevant than ever.’ Erdem Moralioglu, founder of ERDEM ‘Everything great in Western culture has come from the quarrel with nature … The most effective weapon against the flux of nature is art.’ In this blazing work of brilliant originality, a phenomenon ever since it was first published in 1990, Camille Paglia outlines a new unified theory of Western art and literature and the primacy of sex and violence within it. Identifying the competing symbolic forces of Apollo and Dionysus ― reason and instinct, order and chaos, logic and passion, male and female, civilisation and nature ― Sexual Personae outlines key archetypes that embody different levels of Apollonian and Dionysian forces: the Great Mother, the beautiful boy, the femme fatale, the amazon, amongst many others, and traces how these archetypes have animated the pagan battle that underlies all Western art and culture. Audacious, vastly erudite, and wildly entertaining, Sexual Personae is art history that invites us to see the entire world anew. ‘Few scholarly books are as readable as Sexual Personae, and none are as funny’ The Spectator ‘A remarkable book, at once outrageous and compelling, fanatical and brilliant’ The Washington Post

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9781917189552

Table of Contents

Reviews

‘A fine, disturbing book. It seeks to attack the reader’s emotions as well as his/her prejudices. It is very learned. Each sentence jabs like a needle.’ -- Anthony Burgess ‘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 * ‘Sexual Personae an enormous sensation of a book … there is no book comparable in scope, stance, design, or insight … A masterwork.’ -- Harold Bloom ‘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 * ‘One of the few thoroughly enjoyable works of criticism written in the American language in the last couple of decades … immensely ambitious, vastly erudite, feisty, often outrageous, and sometimes dazzlingly brilliant.’ -- Robert Alter ‘Camille Paglia’s syncretic theoretical enterprise invoking Frazer, Freud, Nietzsche, and Bloom, from anthropology to influence theory and psychobiography, is an immense tour de force.’ -- Pat Righelato ‘Wild and brilliant.’ -- Bruce Thornton ‘A powerful account of gender as depicted in Western art and literature.’ -- Melvin Konner ‘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 <em>Lipstick Traces</em> ‘Paglia charts a vast theory of western culture and its Decadent undertow, detonating sacrosanct contemporary thought and doctrine at every turn … “Pagan” in its own pictorialism, sprawl, and unstopped prose, her unusual book creates its brilliant effect from an explosive fusing of scholarship and theatre.’ -- <em>Kirkus Reviews</em>, starred review ‘This book is a red comet in a smog-filled sky … Brilliant.’ * The Nation * ‘An essential public intellectual.’ * Vice *

‘A fine, disturbing book. It seeks to attack the reader’s emotions as well as his/her prejudices. It is very learned. Each sentence jabs like a needle.’ -- Anthony Burgess ‘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 * ‘Sexual Personae’ an enormous sensation of a book … there is no book comparable in scope, stance, design, or insight … A masterwork.’ -- Harold Bloom ‘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 * ‘One of the few thoroughly enjoyable works of criticism written in the American language in the last couple of decades … immensely ambitious, vastly erudite, feisty, often outrageous, and sometimes dazzlingly brilliant.’ -- Robert Alter ‘Camille Paglia’s syncretic theoretical enterprise invoking Frazer, Freud, Nietzsche, and Bloom, from anthropology to influence theory and psychobiography, is an immense tour de force.’ -- Pat Righelato ‘Wild and brilliant.’ -- Bruce Thornton ‘A powerful account of gender as depicted in Western art and literature.’ -- Melvin Konner ‘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 <em>Lipstick Traces</em> ‘Paglia charts a vast theory of western culture and its Decadent undertow, detonating sacrosanct contemporary thought and doctrine at every turn … “Pagan” in its own pictorialism, sprawl, and unstopped prose, her unusual book creates its brilliant effect from an explosive fusing of scholarship and theatre.’ -- <em>Kirkus Reviews</em>, starred review ‘This book is a red comet in a smog-filled sky … Brilliant.’ * The Nation * ‘An essential public intellectual.’ * Vice *

Author Information

Camille Paglia is a scholar and culture critic who taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for nearly 40 years. She is also the author of Sex, Art, and American Culture; Vamps & Tramps; The Birds; Break, Blow, Burn; Glittering Images; Free Women, Free Men; and Provocations.

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