Sexual Personae Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

by PAGLIA, CAMILLE

• ISBN13: 9780679735793
• ISBN10: 0679735798
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-08-20
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.

Author Biography

Camille Paglia is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. A regular contributor to Salon.com, she is the author of Glittering Images; Break, Blow, Burn; Sexual Personae; Sex, Art, and American Culture; and Vamps & Tramps.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art	p. 1
The Birth of the Western Eye	p. 40
Apollo and Dionysus	p. 72
Pagan Beauty	p. 99
Renaissance Form: Italian Art	p. 140
Spenser and Apollo: The Faerie Queene	p. 170
Shakespeare and Dionysus: As You Like It and Antony and Cleopatra	p. 194
Return of the Great Mother: Rousseau vs. Sade	p. 230
Amazons, Mothers, Ghosts: Goethe to Gothic	p. 248
Sex Bound and Unbound: Blake	p. 270
Marriage to Mother Nature: Wordsworth	p. 300
The Daemon as Lesbian Vampire: Coleridge	p. 317
Speed and Space: Byron	p. 347
Light and Heat: Shelley and Keats	p. 365
Cults of Sex and Beauty: Balzac	p. 389
Cults of Sex and Beauty: Gautier, Baudelaire, and Huysmans	p. 408
Romantic Shadows: Emily Bronte	p. 439
Romantic Shadows: Swinburne and Pater	p. 460
Apollo Daemonized: Decadent Art	p. 489
The Beautiful Boy as Destroyer: Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray	p. 512
The English Epicene: Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest	p. 531
American Decadents: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville	p. 572
American Decadents: Emerson, Whitman, James	p. 598
Amberst's Madame de Sade: Emily Dickinson	p. 623
Notes	p. 675
Index	p. 701
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.