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In the mold of his acclaimed History of Beauty , renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts. What is the voyeuristic impulse behind our attraction to the gruesome and the horrible? Where does the... read more

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Table of Contents edit see section history

Introduction

Chapter I - Ugliness in the Classical World
1. A Word Dominated by Beauty?
2. The Greek World and Horror

Chapter II - Passion, Death, Martyrdom
1. The "Pancalistic" View of the Universe
2. The Suffering of Christ
3. Martyrs, Hermits, Penitents
4. The Triumph of Death

Chapter III - The Apocalypse, Hell, and the Devil
1. A Universe of Horrors
2. Hell
3. The Metamorphoses of the Devil

Chapter IV - Monsters and Portents
1. Prodigies and Monsters
2. An Aesthetic of the Immeasurable
3. The Moralization of Monsters
4. The Mirabilia
5. The Fate of Monsters

Chapter V - The Ugly, the Comic, and the Obscene
1. Priapus
2. Satires on the Peasantry and Carnival Festivities
3. Renaissance and Liberation
4. Caricature

Chapter VI - The Ugliness of Woman from Antiquity to the Baroque Period
1. The Anti-Female Tradition
2. Mannerism and the Baroque

Chapter VII - The Devil in the Modern World
1. From Rebellious Satan to Poor Mephistopheles
2. The Demonization of the Enemy

Chapter VIII - Witchcraft, Satanism, Sadism
1. Witches
2. Satanism, Sadism, and the Taste for Cruelty

Chapter IX - Physica curiosa
1. Lunar Births and Disemboweled Corpses
2. Physiognomy

Chapter X - Romanticism and the Redemption of Ugliness
1. The Philosophy of Ugliness
2. The Ugly and the Damned
3. The Ugly and the Unhappy
4. The Unhappy and the Ill

Chapter XI - The Uncanny

Chapter XII - Iron Towers and Ivory Towers
1. Industrial Ugliness
2. Decadentism and the Licentiousness of the Ugly

Chapter XIII - The Avant-Garde and the Triumph of Ugliness

Chapter XIV - The Ugliness of Others, Kitsch, and Camp
1. The Ugliness of Others
2. Kitsch
3. Camp

Chapter XV - Ugliness Today

General bibliography
Bibliographical references of excerpts
Index of Authors and Other Sources
Index of Artists
Photography Credits

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Umberto Eco (Editor)

Other Contributors:

  1. Alastair McEwen (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: Italian
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Italy
Publication Date: August 2007
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 456

Classification edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • History of Beauty
  • Salome and Judas in the Cave of Sex
  • On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art & Literature
  • Bloom's Literary Themes The Grotesque
  • Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts (Medieval Life in Manuscripts)
  • The Modernist Cult of Ugliness: Aesthetic and Gender Politics
  • Beauty And Ugliness: And Other Studies In Psychological Aesthetics (1912)

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