Sexual Personae:
Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
Sexual Personae:
Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
Overview
A visionary, bestselling work of art criticism, now reissued for a contemporary audience.
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 classic work, Camille Paglia compels us to consider again the greatness of the Western canon 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 traces how great art emerges out of this conflict. It outlines key archetypes that embody varying levels of Apollonian and Dionysian forces: the Great Mother, the beautiful boy, the femme fatale, the amazon, amongst many others. Sexual Personae invites us to consider anew the conflict between the sexes as the source of creativity, beauty, and art itself.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Other rights
- Paperback
- 198mm x 129mm
- 720 pages
- 9781917189552
- GBP£16.99
- 21 May 2026
- UK & Commonwealth (ex. Can)
- Yale University Press
Praise
‘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.’
‘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.’
About the Author
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.
