Sexual personae Art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson / Camille Paglia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Paglia, Camille, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature, Modern--19th century--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

Literature, Modern--History and criticism.

Romanticism.

Paganism in literature.

Sex in literature.

Decadence (Literary movement).

Decadence in literature.

Arts.

Paganism in art.

Sex in art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (712 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c1990.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this brilliantly original book, Camille Paglia identifies some of the major patterns that have endured in western culture from ancient Egypt and Greece to the present. According to Paglia, one source of continuity is paganism, which, undefeated by Judeo-Christianity, continues to flourish in art, eroticism, astrology, and pop culture. Others, she says, are androgyny, sadism, and the aggressive western eye, which has created our art and cinema. Paglia follows these and other themes from Nefertiti and the Venus of Willendorf to Apollo and Dionysus, from Botticelli and Michaelangelo to Shakespeare and Blake and finally to Emily Dickinson, who, along with other major nineteenth-century authors, becomes a remarkable example of Romanticism turned into Decadence. Paglia offers provocative views of literature, art history, psychology, and religion. She focuses, for example, on the amorality, voyeurism, and pornography in great art that have been ignored or glossed over by most critics. She discusses sex and nature as brutal daemonic forces, and she criticizes feminists for sentimentality or wishful thinking about the causes of rape, violence, and poor relations between the sexes. She stressed the biologic basis of sex differences and sees the mother as an overwhelming force who condemns men to lifelong sexual anxiety, from which they escape through rationalism and physical achievement. She examines the culture and style of modern male homosexuals. She demonstrates how much of western life, art, and thought is ruled by personality, which she traces through recurrent types or personae such as the female vampire (Medusa, Lauren Bacall); the pythoness (the Dephic oracle, Gracie Allen); the beautiful boy (Hadrian's Antinous, Dorian Gray); the epicene man of beauty (Lord Byron, Elvis Presley); and the male heroine (Baudelaire, Woody Allen). Her book will stimulate and awe readers everywhere.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List Of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter I. Sex And Violence, Or Nature And Art

Chapter 2. The Birth Of The Western Eye

Chapter 3. Apollo And Dionysus

Chapter 4. Pagan Beauty

Chapter 5. Renaissance Form: Italian Art

Chapter 6. Spenser And Apollo: The Faerie Queene

Chapter 7. Shakespeare And Dionysus: As You Like It And Antony And Cleopatra

Chapter 8. Return Of The Great Mother: Rousseau Vs. Sade

Chapter 9. Amazons, Mothers, Ghosts: Goethe To Gothic

Chapter 10. Sex Bound And Unbound: Blake

Chapter 11. Marriage To Mother Nature: Wordsworth

Chapter 12. The Daemon As Lesbian Vampire: Coleridge

Chapter 13. Speed And Space: Byron

Chapter 14. Light And Heat: Shelley And Keats

Chapter 15. Cults Of Sex And Beauty: Balzac

Chapter 16. Cults Of Sex And Beauty: Gautier, Baudelaire, And Huysmans

Chapter 17. Romantic Shadows: Emily Bronte

Chapter 18. Romantic Shadows: Swinburne And Pater

Chapter 19. Apollo Daemonized: Decadent Art

Chapter 20. The Beautiful Boy As Destroyer: Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Chapter 21. The English Epicene: Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest

Chapter 22. American Decadents: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville

Chapter 23. American Decadents: Emerson, Whitman, James

Chapter 24. Amherst's Madame De Sade: Emily Dickinson

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780300182132

0300182139

9781283950169

1283950162

OCLC:

843053658