Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale Nota Bene) - Tapa blanda

"Sexual Personae is an enormous sensation of a book, in all the better senses of 'sensation'. There is no book comparable in scope, stance, design or insight." Harold Bloom "A fine, disturbing book. It seeks to attack the reader's emotions as well as his/her prejudices. It is very learned. Each sentence jabs like a needle." Anthony Burgess "It relentlessly pursues its ambition to assault the emotions, batter the brain and aim a kick at the groin." Alan Bold, The Times "Provocative... a radical reappraisal of the human condition. Her style is marked by angry exhiliration, brittle epigrams and acid paradoxes." Times Literary Supplement

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.