Sexual Personae

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
Cover of the first edition
AuthorCamille Paglia
Cover artistLouise Fili
LanguageEnglish
SubjectThe Decadent movement
Paganism in art
Apollonian/Dionysian opposition
Sexual archetypes
PublisherYale University Press
Publication date
1990
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages712
ISBN9780300043969

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson is a 1990 work about sexual decadence in Western literature and the visual arts by scholar Camille Paglia, in which she addresses major artists and writers such as Donatello, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Emily Brontë, and Oscar Wilde. Following Friedrich Nietzsche, Paglia argues that the primary conflict in Western culture is between the binary forces of the Apollonian and Dionysian, Apollo being associated with order, symmetry, culture, rationality, and sky, and Dionysus with disorder, chaos, nature, emotion, and earth.[1] The book became a bestseller,[2] and was praised by numerous literary critics, although it also received critical reviews from numerous feminist scholars.

  1. ^ Paglia, Camille (2001). "Sexual Personae. Art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson" (PDF). edisciplinas.usp.br. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, Yale Nota Bene. Retrieved 21 October 2023. Free download.
  2. ^ "UArts Students Want Camille Paglia Gone". The Atlantic. May 1, 2019. Retrieved December 27, 2022.