A stimulating work, and perhaps Paglia had to write that way to get the attention of a wider public, but reading her is in the end like being hit on the head over and over again with a hammer. Still, there are flashes of genus... like "Driving is the American sublime" (quoted from memory). ( )

Camille Paglia’s monumental, mesmerizing Sexual Personae is one of the great unsung works of the 20th century. Paglia proposes a broad yet plausible thesis: i.e. that the great unresolved tension between cool, incisive Apollonian artistry and earthy, brutal Dionysian chaos is the engine that has driven western art and literature to its heights.

And she illustrates and defends this thesis with power, energy and real insight, tracing out its genesis and developments from Egypt and Greece to 19th-century British and American poetry. Her insights into the Greeks, Spenser, and Blake are noteworthy, but the deepest and most original analysis here is Paglia’s exposure and refutation of the line of liberal/leftist fantasizing about the true nature of humanity that runs from Rousseau through the 19th-century Romantics such as Wordsworth and Emerson and on into 20th-century feminism and socialism. Attempts to ‘liberate’ humanity from the strictures of civilized society leads not to peace and freedom, but to tyranny and sadism. As Paglia herself puts it in what may be the most striking line in a book suffused with memorable one-liners:

Every road from Rousseau leads to Sade.

Paglia backs up her assertion with remarkable studies of Sade himself and, in the book’s ultimate chapter, Emily Dickinson.

One caution here to the casual reader: reading this book may revolutionize the way you look at arts and literature. It’s that good. But it is not an ‘easy’ book. Paglia’s style is singular; she makes more clear, assertive statements in a single page than you’ll see in whole volumes of pathetic postmodernist criticism. But it’s also a dense, heavily allusive style that demands close attention. At nearly 700 closely-printed pages, Sexual Personae is a project. But the time invested in reading it pays off in so many ways that I recommend it without reservation. ( )

Paglia propounds some very interesting theories but the writing can seem disjointed at times. She makes it impossible to follow what her reasoning may have been when she writes sentences that neither relate to the sentence preceding it nor the topic sentence. The sections that were written for other publications are the most coherent. ( )

Paglia writes challening about the modern theories of feminism. She wants to say alot of things in this book and sometimes with a great inspiration. ( )

The subtitle and the 10 different categories listed in the Cataloging reflect the generosity of this book. Physically demanding (700 pages -- i should talk, with two 740 pagers!) and bold as all literary criticism should be but seldom is, this is a feast. To me, Paglia's bold summations of the aesthetics of various civilizations and her savage depiction of Dickinson as "Amherst's Madame de Sade" were high-points and my only complaint is that she seemed a bit too smitten by freud. I wish Paglia wrote another big book instead of wasting her time on timely stuff.