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Sexual Personae
First published 1990 · 736 pages
A sweeping, scholarly excavation of the pagan, sexual, and decadent undercurrents pulsing beneath the surface of Western literature.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like embarking on a massive, intellectually rigorous expedition through the shadowy, decadent corridors of the Western literary canon. The pace is steady and deliberate, demanding the reader's full attention as it meticulously dissects the works of literary giants from Shakespeare and Rousseau to Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson. The mood is deeply contemplative and steeped in the provocative aesthetics of Romanticism and the Decadent movement. It surrounds you with an atmosphere of scholarly intensity, peeling back the polite veneer of classic texts to expose their raw, pagan, and sexual undercurrents. This is a text for the deeply curious, delighting readers who crave dense, analytical criticism that challenges conventional readings of art, history, and modern literature.
- Mood
- intellectual
- decadent
- contemplative
- Tone
- scholarly
- analytical
- provocative
- serious
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the intersection of art and sexuality · pagan undercurrents in literature · the nature of decadence · romanticism and its shadows
- The writing
- Scholarly and deeply analytical, meticulously dissecting the works of canonical authors to unearth hidden thematic threads.
- The arc
- A rigorous intellectual journey that peels back the polite surface of the Western canon to reveal its raw, pagan, and decadent roots.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave dense, provocative literary criticism and are fascinated by the sexual and pagan motifs hidden within classic literature.
Content notes
- discussions of sex in art
- literary analysis of decadence
- references to de Sade
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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