num_pages: 736
description: Is Emily Dickinson "the female Sade"? Is Donatello's David a bit of paedophile pornography? What is the secret kinship between Byron and Elvis Presley, between the Medusa and Madonna? How do liberals and feminists - as well as conservatives - fatally misread human nature? This audacious and omnivorously learned work of guerilla scholarship offers nothing less than a unified-field theory of Western culture, high and low, since the Egyptians invented beauty - making a persuasive case for all art as a pagan battleground between male and female, form and chaos, civilisation and demonic nature.
language: English
title: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
titlecomplete: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale Nota Bene)
genres: Essays, Feminism, History, Cultural, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Psychology, Sexuality, Nonfiction, Art
ratings_count: 3134
awards: awardedAt: 631180800000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Criticism
publisher: Yale University Press