Sexual Personae

Everything great in Western culture has come from the quarrel with nature … The most effective weapon against the flux of nature is art.

In this classic work, Camille Paglia compels us to consider again the greatness of the Western canon and the primacy of sex and violence within it. Identifying the competing symbolic forces of Apollo and Dionysus — reason and instinct, order and chaos, logic and passion, male and female, civilisation and nature — Sexual Personae traces how great art emerges out of this conflict. It outlines key archetypes that embody varying levels of Apollonian and Dionysian forces: the Great Mother, the beautiful boy, the femme fatale, the amazon, amongst many others. Sexual Personae invites us to consider anew the conflict between the sexes as the source of creativity, beauty, and art itself.