Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

Title: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

Author: Camille Paglia 

Publisher: Vintage

Publication Year: 1991

ISBN:  9780679735793

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.