Books[edit]
Sexual Personae (1990)[edit]
Paglia's Sexual Personae was rejected by at least seven different publishers before it was published by Yale University Press, whereupon it became a best seller, reaching seventh place on the paperback best-seller list, a rare accomplishment for a scholarly book.[10] 'Paglia called it her "prison book", commenting, "I felt like Cervantes, Genet. It took all the resources of being Catholic to cut myself off and sit in my cell."[22] Sexual Personae has been called an "energetic, Freud-friendly reading of Western art", one that seemed "heretical and perverse", at the height of political correctness; according to Daniel Nester, its characterization of "William Blake as the British Marquis de Sade or Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson as 'self-ruling hermaphrodites who cannot mate' still pricks up many an English major's ears".[24]
In the book, Paglia argues that human nature has an inherently dangerous Dionysian or chthonic aspect, especially in regard to sexuality.[91] Culture and civilization are created by men and represent an attempt to contain that force.[91] Women are powerful, too, but as natural forces, and both marriage and religion are means to contain chaotic forces.[10] A best seller, it was described by Terry Teachout in a New York Times book review as being both "intellectually stimulating" and "exasperating".[92] Sexual Personae received critical reviews from numerous feminist scholars.[93] Anthony Burgess described Sexual Personae as "a fine disturbing book" that "seeks to attack the reader's emotions as well as his or her prejudices".[94]
Sex, Art and American Culture (1992)[edit]
| External videos | |
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 Presentation by Paglia on Sex, Art and American Culture, October 26, 1994, C-SPAN |
Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays is a collection of short pieces, many published previously as editorials or reviews, and some transcripts of interviews.[74] The essays cover such subjects as Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, rock music, Robert Mapplethorpe, the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination, rape, Marlon Brando, drag, Milton Kessler, and academia. It made The New York Times bestseller list for paperbacks.[95]
Vamps and Tramps (1994)[edit]
Vamps and Tramps: New Essays is a collection of 42 short articles and a long essay, "No Law in the Arena: a Pagan Theory of Sexuality". It also contains a collection of cartoons from newspapers about Paglia. Writing for The New York Times, Wendy Steiner wrote "Comic, camp, outspoken, Ms. Paglia throws an absurdist shoe into the ponderous wheels of academia".[96] Michiko Kakutani, also writing for The New York Times, wrote: "Her writings on education ... are highly persuasive, just as some of her essays on the perils of regulating pornography and the puritanical excesses of the women's movement radiate a fierce common sense ... Unfortunately, Ms. Paglia has a way of undermining her more interesting arguments with flip, hyperbolic declarations".[97]
The Birds[edit]
In 1998, in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the release of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, the British Film Institute commissioned Paglia to write a book about the film. The book interprets the film as "in the main line of British Romanticism descending from the raw nature-tableaux and sinister femme-fatales of Coleridge".[98] Paglia uses a psychoanalytic framework to interpret the film as portraying "a release of primitive forces of sex and appetite that have been subdued but never fully tamed".[99]
Break, Blow, Burn (2005)[edit]
Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems is a collection of 43 short selections of verse with an accompanying essay by Paglia.[100] The collection is oriented primarily to those unfamiliar with the works.[100] Clive James wrote that Paglia tends to focus on American works as it moves from Shakespeare forward through time, with Yeats, following Coleridge, as the last European discussed,[100] but emphasized her range of sympathy and her ability to juxtapose and unite distinct art forms in her analysis.[100]
Glittering Images (2012)[edit]
Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars is a series of essays about notable works of art from ancient to modern times, published in October 2012.[101] Writer John Adams of The New York Times Book Review was skeptical of the book, accusing it of being "so agenda driven and so riddled with polemic asides that its potential to persuade is forever being compromised".[40] Gary Rosen of The Wall Street Journal, however, praised the book's "impressive range" and accessibility to readers.[102]
Free Women, Free Men (2017)[edit]
| External videos | |
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| Presentation by Paglia on Free Women, Free Men, March 20, 2017, C-SPAN |
Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism is a series of essays from 1990 onward.[103] Dwight Garner in The New York Times wrote Paglia's essays address two main targets: modern feminism, which, Paglia writes, "has become a catchall vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses," and modern American universities, of which she asks, "How is it possible that today's academic left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and overregulation of student life?"[104]
Provocations (2018)[edit]
Paglia's fourth essay collection, Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education, was published by Pantheon on October 9, 2018.[105]