Sexual Personae

Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

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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