Sexual Personae
by Camille Paglia · first published 1990
7mentions
6recommended by
7HN commenters
2016–2021first – last mentioned
86% recommend14% critical
Why HN recommends it
A broad sweep through Western art and literature, tracing recurring sexual archetypes from ancient Egypt to Emily Dickinson. Its mental models for analyzing culture and its fresh view of nature stand out.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Discusses the works of Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, Rousseau, de Sade, Goethe, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, Huysmans, Emily Bronte, Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Whitman, Henry James, and Emily Dickinson.
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…recommendations in it. Also given that it's supposed to be a mind-expanding list, throw in Blindsight by Peter Watts. The fantasy section needs Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. (and throw Harry Potter out) Sexual Personae by Paglia deserves to be named in the Gender/sexuality section. And an off-beat recommendation. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud is a truly smart book on comics, in the form of a graphic novel.
on “Mind-expanding books” ↗…O’Hara, Frank - Selected Poems Orwell, George - 1984 Orwell, George - Inside The Whale And Other Essays Packard, Vance - Hidden Persuaders, The Pagels, Elaine - Gnostic Gospels, The Paglia, Camille - Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson Petry, Ann - Street, The di Pirajno, Alberto Denti - A Grave For A Dolphin Priestley, J.B. - English Journey Rechy, John - City Of Night Sadecky,…
on “David Bowie’s Top 100 Books (2013)” ↗Conveniently, I can just tack onto this list two more books and there we will have the 4 most important books on my life so far. Sexual Personae By Camille Paglia Capital: Volume I By Karl Marx
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae. The first chapter especially blew my socks off. I never have been able to see nature and man's relation to it in the same way after that.
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia I'm only a quarter of the way through but it's already giving me vast amounts of insight into the roots of western civilization. It's also equipping me with mental models to analyze…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗For one thing, I haven't read almost all of them! I haven't read so much 20th-21st C stuff as the all-time classics, ancient and modern. I did start reading Sexual Personae a couple of years ago and really loved it, must get back to that. I discovered Joan Didion last year, but didn't read much before being distracted, must get back to her. Thanks for the reminders. Could…
on “Great Essays and Essayists” ↗…Note the person grouping these three very disparate thinkers is Paglia. I didn't cherry-pick that quote, it's just the first para of her book. I honestly am not sure what she means by that first page of Sexual Personae (for example she doesn't define nature), and one paragraph is not enough to do her awful writing justice because it bludgeons the reader with paragraph after paragraph of the same thing, as if to bully…
on “The Provocations of Camille Paglia” ↗