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Supplemental Essay: "Gender Personas" in
Chapter 4 of Sexual Personae


List of "Gender Personas" Appearing in Chapter 4

See my main essay on Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae for an explanation of the presentation of the following material. Page numbers reflect the paperback edition of Sexual Personae.[1]

Link to main essay: Notes on Sexual Personae

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Male

  • ExDion: Laocoon (p. 99); Euripides' Bacchae [note 3] (pp. 103-104); Hellenistic Beautiful boy [note 4] (pp. 123-124); Hellenistic Greece [note 1] (pp. 124-125); Roman Empire [note 2] (pp. 130-131); Great Mother worship (rites of Cybele) in Rome (pp. 137-138)

  • Dion: (none)

  • Andr: High classic Beautiful boy/kouros [note 4] (pp. 109-123); Virgil's Aeneid (pp. 128-130)

  • Apol: Early and high classic Greece [note 1] (p. 99); Aeschylus' Oresteia (p. 99); Archaic kouros [note 4] (p. 123); Roman Republic [note 2] (pp. 125-127); Christianity in Rome (p. 138)

  • ExApol: (none)

 

Female

  • ExDion: (none)

  • Dion: (none)

  • Andr: (none)

  • Apol: (none)

  • ExApol: Euripides' Medea [note 3] (pp. 108-109)

Notes

[Note 1]

Greece timeline

1) Archaic Greece (1000-500 BCE) 

2) Early and high classic Greece (480-400 BCE) = High Apollonian (p. 99) 

3) Hellenistic Greece (323-30 BCE) = Late phase/Dionysian (pp. 123-124)

 

[Note 2]

Rome timeline

1) Roman Kingdom (753-509 BCE) 

2) Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) = High Apollonian (pp. 125-127) 

3) Roman Empire (27 BCE-476 CE) = Late phase/Decadent (pp. 130-131)

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[Note 3]

Paglia says that the playwright Euripides himself was "the first decadent artist" (p. 109), but his plays end up in different categories:  The Bacchae was chthonian Dionysian (pp. 103-104), while Medea had a vampiric heroine (pp. 108-109). 

 

[Note 4]

In her discussion of the Beautiful Boy/kouros, Paglia discusses the evolution of the Beautiful Boy across the three periods of Greek history. Thus:

1) Archaic Greece (1000-500 BCE) = Archaic kouros = Apollonian (see Glittering Images, p. 17-18)

2) Early and high classic Greece (480-400 BCE) = High classic Beautiful boy/kouros  = Androgyne (pp. 109-123)

3) Hellenistic Greece (323-30 BCE) = Hellenistic Beautiful boy = chthonian Dionysian (pp. 123-124)

For more discussion on the subject of the Beautiful Boy/kouros, see the supplemental essay on Androgyny, which is linked in the main blog in the chapter on Sensing

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Link: Return to Notes on Sexual Personae

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~Posted May 22, 2024

References

[1] Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (First Vintage Books Edition, 1991).

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