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Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Paperback)

by Camille Paglia (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 736 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Books; Vintage Books ed edition (1 Feb 1992)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0679735798
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679735793
  • Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.2 x 3.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 238,975 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #28 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism > Literary Theory & Movements > Romanticism

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Product Description

Review

"Sexual Personae is an enormous sensation of a book, in all the better senses of 'sensation'. There is no book comparable in scope, stance, design or insight." Harold Bloom "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 "It relentlessly pursues its ambition to assault the emotions, batter the brain and aim a kick at the groin." Alan Bold, The Times "Provocative... a radical reappraisal of the human condition. Her style is marked by angry exhiliration, brittle epigrams and acid paradoxes." Times Literary Supplement --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.


Anthony Burgess

"A fine, disturbing book. It seeks to attack the reader's emotions as well as his/her prejudices..." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Overwhelming yet menacing, 17 April 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Hardcover)
It is unlikely most readers will get through this book without being somewhat overwelmed by its sparkle, and god/desslike overview of Western literature. It is in the connections that Pagalia really bewilders, uncovering tropes that testify to her originality, showing the marks of a real poetess in prose. There are two chapters on Oscar Wilde and one might recall while reading them a conversation that took place between Wilde and Whistler. Whistler had said something clever, to which Wilde responded. "I wish I had said that." "You will Oscar," answered Whistler, "you will." For all Pagalia's creative, poetic tinkering with concepts, some of those concepts are those of other authors who get far too little recognition here. When she uses the metaphor of a wedge in talking about sexuality why doesn't Pagalia credit Susan Sontag's work on pornography, and really, in a book constructed around the antagonism of Apollo and Dionysus, what about citing Norman Brown's ground breaking work "Life Against Death." Unless you have a taste for sado-masochistic imagery and the determination to try to figure why it so fascinates this author don't attempt this book. That apart, the work will do little but stimulate the poet/ess in you, or if you are a critic, cause you a great deal of anxiety.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The Glittering Eyes of Camille Paglia, 2 Feb 2006
By JC (Epsom, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale Nota Bene) (Paperback)
Taken carefully, like high quality chocolate, this gigantic, opiate den of a book induces in the reader a welcome yearning to find or revisit the veiled, dark side of some wonderful writing.
Each chapter dwells, in chronological order, on a selection of writers Paglia identifies as key to her uncovering of sexual archetypes - some old, some newly found – across the classic canon of art & literature.
A timeline is the first & last stable element of the book, as she barely touches the rudder to drift the reader through a protean, delicious, swamp-realm of sexual drives, longings & fervent consummations emerging from the misty shadows of the artists` work.
At any turn the journey can move from a moment of searing clarity & insight (e.g. the idea that men created the “beauty in nature” aesthetic to drown out despairing truth – that nature is an uncontrollable, sadistic force which will always prevail somehow) or slide miles away for an extended, purely aesthetic exaltation of a poem`s beauty & style, allowing Paglia`s boundless critical language to, at times, out-shimmer its subject.
As it delineates & parades varieties of sexual personae – beautiful boys, nurturing males, vampiric lesbians, femme fatales, alien androgynes & hieratic hermaphrodite, their literary habitats, their guises & displays - this book`s overall effect is akin to swooning; a too-muchness of information & graphic analysis – one long orgy of impulses, connections & echoes across art, social politics and sexual expression.
Some might find the scintillating richness of forensic scholarship & erotic allusion draining & saturating; others (like this reader) will willingly plunge into this perfumed mud bath & roil in it all.
At the end, the rewards are an appreciation of Paglia`s ability to reach the parts most other critics won`t reach, an opened-up list of further reading that should sustain any liberated appetite for years & an ability to see through anything in trousers.
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6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Dancing to the rhythm of an African Nietzsche: Euro culture, 12 Nov 2002
By Earl Hazell (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale Nota Bene) (Paperback)
It isn't very often that a book can create such seizmic shiftsin a person's consciousness and perspective on, oh, just abouteverything. I sense what it must have been like at the turn of the century when the works of Nietszche and Freud- her intellectual precursors and patron saints- had their works argued and denounced and quickly lauded simultaneously. The beauty of this book, beyond her shining, acrobatic, intellect, is that it leaves you changed. This is not a dime-store novel- type intellectual polemic, that leaves you as if you just read the Harvard English professor's version of the National Enquirer. This is the kind of work that, when you put down, you become a renter in the apartment building of the author's mind- regardless of how much of your own furniture of opinions you choose to bring with you. To say I agree with her findings is almost irrelevant- in fact, that may be the central beauty of the whole thing. It is impossible to agree or diagree without seeing the world through her frame of reference while trying to prove your point- just as Freud and Nietzsche amde you do- and still do- before her.

If there are any faults that would render it unworthy of a perfect five star rating, I wouldn't go with the feeling of being exhausted by her erudition or polemic style. Even the cultural narcissism- obviously coming out of her Rolling Stones/Woodstock days of youth, which bleeds through her education- is forgiveable. Her only major fault I would say is what could best be called "Afro-phobia", and her avoidance of the African influence on Western culture, and its many sophisticated artistic and sexual/religious mores made manifest through the ages in not just 20th Century America.

Nonetheless, if you are even remotely fascinated by the subject matter- or any one of the God knows how many subjects, from sex to politics, it touches on while she proves her central thesis, you will immensely enjoy this book.

If your interest goes beyond that, you may find yourself as I have, ready to change the shape and the direction of your career.

Either way, you cannot look at the soul of art, artists and writers the same afterwards.

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5.0 out of 5 stars erudite and thought provoking.
this is a treat of a book. the author is erudite in her knowledge and picks and links thoughts and ideas. she has a clear view and this is a classic. Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2004 by claireodeon

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