Sexual Personae: Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

ISBN-13:	9780679735793
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/20/1991
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	736
Sales rank:	146,492
Product dimensions:	5.14(w) x 7.97(h) x 1.47(d)

The fiery, provocative, and unparalleled work of feminist art criticism that launched the exceptional career of one of our most important public intellectuals—"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). Is Emily Dickinson “the female Sade”? Is Donatello’s David a bit of pedophile pornography? 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. With 47 photographs.