Ugliness: A Cultural History
Autor Gretchen E. Hendersonen Limba Engleză Hardback – 15 dec 2015
Ugly
as
sin,
the
ugly
duckling—or
maybe
you
fell
out
of
the
ugly
tree?
Let’s
face
it,
we’ve
all
used
the
word
“ugly”
to
describe
someone
we’ve
seen—hopefully
just
in
our
private
thoughts—but
have
we
ever
considered
how
slippery
the
term
can
be,
indicating
anything
from
the
slightly
unsightly
to
the
downright
revolting?
What
really
lurks
behind
this
most
favored
insult?
In
this
actually
beautiful
book,
Gretchen
E.
Henderson
casts
an
unfazed
gaze
at
ugliness,
tracing
its
long-standing
grasp
on
our
cultural
imagination
and
highlighting
all
the
peculiar
ways
it
has
attracted
us
to
its
repulsion.
Henderson explores the ways we have perceived ugliness throughout history, from ancient Roman feasts to medieval grotesque gargoyles, from Mary Shelley’sFrankensteinto the Nazi Exhibition of Degenerate Art. Covering literature, art, music, and even the cutest possible incarnation of the term—Uglydolls—she reveals how ugliness has long posed a challenge to aesthetics and taste. She moves beyond the traditional philosophic argument that simply places ugliness in opposition to beauty in order to dismantle just what we mean when we say “ugly.” Following ugly things wherever they have trod, she traverses continents and centuries to delineate the changing map of ugliness and the profound effects it has had on the public imagination, littering her path with one fascinating tidbit after another.
Lovingly illustrated with the foulest images from art, history, and culture,Uglinessoffers an oddly refreshing perspective, going past the surface to ask what “ugly” truly is, even as its meaning continues to shift.
Henderson explores the ways we have perceived ugliness throughout history, from ancient Roman feasts to medieval grotesque gargoyles, from Mary Shelley’sFrankensteinto the Nazi Exhibition of Degenerate Art. Covering literature, art, music, and even the cutest possible incarnation of the term—Uglydolls—she reveals how ugliness has long posed a challenge to aesthetics and taste. She moves beyond the traditional philosophic argument that simply places ugliness in opposition to beauty in order to dismantle just what we mean when we say “ugly.” Following ugly things wherever they have trod, she traverses continents and centuries to delineate the changing map of ugliness and the profound effects it has had on the public imagination, littering her path with one fascinating tidbit after another.
Lovingly illustrated with the foulest images from art, history, and culture,Uglinessoffers an oddly refreshing perspective, going past the surface to ask what “ugly” truly is, even as its meaning continues to shift.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781780235240
ISBN-10: 1780235240
Pagini: 224
Ilustrații: 60 halftones
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.54 kg
Editura: REAKTION BOOKS
Colecția Reaktion Books
ISBN-10: 1780235240
Pagini: 224
Ilustrații: 60 halftones
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.54 kg
Editura: REAKTION BOOKS
Colecția Reaktion Books
Notă biografică
Gretchen
E.
Hendersonis
a
lecturer
in
English
at
Georgetown
University
and
an
affiliated
scholar
in
art
history
at
Kenyon
College.
Her
recent
books
includeThe
House
Enters
the
StreetandGalerie
de
Difformité.
Cuprins
Introduction:Pretty
Ugly:
A
Question
of
Culture
One
Ugly Ones: Uncomfortable Anomalies
Polyphemus: ‘A Monster of a Main’
Dame Ragnell: ‘She Was a Loathly One!”
A Grotesque Old Woman: ‘The Ugly Duchess’
William Hay: ‘Never Was, Nor Will Be, a Member of the Ugly Club’
Julia Pastrana: ‘The Ugliest Woman in the World’
Orlan: ‘A Beautiful Woman who is Deliberately Becoming Ugly.”
Ugly Ones: Uncomfortably Grouped
Two
Ugly Groups: Resisting Classification
Monsters and Monstrosities: Bordering Uglies
Outcasts and Outward Signs: Signifying Uglies
Primitives and Venuses: Colonizing Uglies
Broken Faces and Degenerate Bodies: Militarizing Uglies
Ugly Laws and Ugly Dolls: Legislating Uglies
Uglies United? Commercializing Ugly Groups
Three
Ugly Senses: Transgressing Perceived Borders
Ugly Sight: Seeing Is Believing?
Ugly Sound: Do You Hear What I Hear?
Ugly Smell: A Nose for Trouble?
Ugly Taste: Are You What You Eat?
Ugly Touch: Do You Touch?
Sixth Sense: Feeling is Believing?
Epilogue: Ugly Us: A Cultural Quest?
References
Acknowledgements and Photo Acknowledgements
Index
One
Ugly Ones: Uncomfortable Anomalies
Polyphemus: ‘A Monster of a Main’
Dame Ragnell: ‘She Was a Loathly One!”
A Grotesque Old Woman: ‘The Ugly Duchess’
William Hay: ‘Never Was, Nor Will Be, a Member of the Ugly Club’
Julia Pastrana: ‘The Ugliest Woman in the World’
Orlan: ‘A Beautiful Woman who is Deliberately Becoming Ugly.”
Ugly Ones: Uncomfortably Grouped
Two
Ugly Groups: Resisting Classification
Monsters and Monstrosities: Bordering Uglies
Outcasts and Outward Signs: Signifying Uglies
Primitives and Venuses: Colonizing Uglies
Broken Faces and Degenerate Bodies: Militarizing Uglies
Ugly Laws and Ugly Dolls: Legislating Uglies
Uglies United? Commercializing Ugly Groups
Three
Ugly Senses: Transgressing Perceived Borders
Ugly Sight: Seeing Is Believing?
Ugly Sound: Do You Hear What I Hear?
Ugly Smell: A Nose for Trouble?
Ugly Taste: Are You What You Eat?
Ugly Touch: Do You Touch?
Sixth Sense: Feeling is Believing?
Epilogue: Ugly Us: A Cultural Quest?
References
Acknowledgements and Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Recenzii
“In
her
wide-ranging
and
frequently
illuminating
study,Ugliness:
A
Cultural
History,
published
this
month,
Gretchen
Henderson
traces
the
connections—some
obvious,
but
many
not
at
all—between
aesthetic
norms
and
cultural
anxieties,
from
antiquity
to
the
present
day.
Henderson’s
totemic
character
is
Polyphemus,
the
half-divine
Cyclops
whose
appearance
in
Homer’sOdysseyis
one
of
the
poem’s
most
harrowing
episodes.
Set
apart
by
his
‘non-Greek
race,
enormous
size,
congenital
disorder
and
demigod
status’
(or,
to
put
it
more
broadly,
by
his
difference,
hybridity,
and
hypervisibility),
the
monster
exemplifies
the
lasting
tendency
to
equate
appearance
with
less
tangible
values.
.
.
.
Henderson
artfully
links
the
Polyphemus
myth
to
the
‘hierarchy
of
species’
found
in
Aristotle’s
‘Generation
of
Animals.’
Aristotle’s
‘downhill
slope’
is
topped
by
men,
followed
by
women,
then
devolves
into
‘hybrid
offspring’
like
satyrs
and
fauns.
This
motion,
from
powerful
to
exoticized,
illustrates
the
trick—later
employed
at
the
height
of
phrenological
and
eugenic
crazes—of
forcing
the
worth,
and,
ultimately,
the
humanity,
of
certain
individuals
to
correspond
with
often
arbitrary
aesthetic
categories.
.
.
.
Beauty
does
more
than
simply
seduce:
it
masks
and
perfumes,
freezes
moral
categories
in
place.
Ugliness—with
all
its
seams
unconcealed—is
sometimes
the
closest
thing
to
the
truth.”
“A
fascinating
meditation
on
a
slippery
subject.”
“Henderson
approaches
her
topic
through
an
impressive
number
of
examples,
spanning
disciplines,
mediums,
usages,
geographies,
and
chronologies,
and
including
works
of
fine
and
popular
art,
architecture,
mythology,
cultural
moments,
historical
facts,
and
human
individuals
and
groups.
The
book
offers
an
anecdotal
survey
of
what
people
have
termed
‘ugly’
in
various
contexts.
.
.
.
The
author
manages
to
take
the
discussion
of
ugliness
into
its
own
territory,
beyond
a
mere
opposition
to
beauty.
This
book
provides
an
engaging
and
accessible
cultural
history
that
is
informative
and
entices
the
reader
to
see
things
in
a
different
perspective.”
“Ugliness:
A
Cultural
Historyis
a
provocative
book
because,
while
exploring
our
relationship
to
that
which
we
brand
as
ugly
(or
beautiful),
Gretchen
Henderson
forces
us
to
reflect
on
our
tastes
and
fears,
our
social
conventions,
and
our
everyday
notions
of
justice.
Such
a
call
to
attention
is
always
very
useful;
in
our
prejudiced
age
it
has
become
essential.”
“Henderson’s
cultural
history
of
ugliness
skates,
at
an
entertainingly
high
speed,
across
large
swathes
of
territory,
cultural,
historical,
and
biological,
always
fascinating...[T]he
existence
and
resistance
of
the
ugly
is
a
reminder—urgent
and
intense
and
necessary—that
the
world
does
not
exist
for
us
alone.”
“We
tend
to
use
the
word
confidently,
as
though
ugliness
has
a
self-evident
and
unchanging
meaning.
In
fact,
Henderson
writes,
the
“shape-shifting”
term
has
a
long,
strange,
and
“unruly
history.”
Breaking
her
lively
study
into
sections—“ugly
ones,”
“ugly
groups,”
“ugly
senses”—she
touches
on
an
impressive
assortment
of
cultural
eras
in
order
to
form
a
rather,
well,
unbecoming
picture
of
human
fears,
anxieties
and
prejudices
.
.
.
through
this
well-illustrated
study,
she
makes
a
terrific
case
for
how
we’ve
regulated
the
borders
of
acceptability
and
mistreated
whatever
crosses
the
line.”
“In
this
brief
but
expansive
cultural
history,
Henderson
removes
ugliness
from
its
binary
relationship
with
beauty,
probing
how
the
term
functions
as
a
signifier
of
cultural
boundaries
and
sites
of
transformation.
.
.
.
Henderson's
multidisciplinary
approach
to
the
topic
makes
the
book
a
valuable
resource
for
scholars
throughout
the
arts
and
humanities.
This
would
also
be
a
useful
text
for
freshman
seminars
because
the
writing
style
fosters
discussion
and
critical
thinking.
Overall,
the
book
is
a
highly
recommended
addition
to
academic
and
art
libraries.”
“Engaging
ugliness
beyond
the
realm
of
art
and
aesthetics
and
into
the
realm
of
sound,
sight,
and
embodiment, Ugliness:
A
Cultural
History makes
a
valuable
contribution
to
the
contemporary
study
of
ugliness
and
its
myriad
functions
in
Western
culture.
Henderson
traces
how
ugliness
moves
‘beyond
“ugly”
anomalous
individuals
and
resistant
ugly
groups
to
break
down
borders
through
“ugly”
senses
that
place
all
human
beings
into
an
equal
camp.”
.
.
.
Henderson’s
work
ultimately
demonstrates
that
ugliness
is
far
more
than
an
aesthetic
category.
Instead,
ugliness
operates
relationally
between
people,
things,
spaces,
bodies
and
modes
of
being,
and
that
it
continually
negotiates
different
meanings
and
challenges
its
own
stasis.
It
is
ugliness,
as
much
as
beauty,
that
makes
us
human.”
“Full-blown
examination
of
deformity
through
history—the
medieval
gargoyles,
monsters,
human-animal
hybrids
in
so-called
‘freak
shows’
and
the
like."
"If
beauty
is
in
the
eye
of
the
beholder,
then
so
is
ugliness.
For
proof,
look
no
further
than
the
concept’s
own
history,
most
recently
traced
by
Henderson.
Although
there
are
some
objectively
repugnant
moments—until
the
late
twentieth
century,
cities
including
Chicago
and
Omaha
had
'ugly
laws'
that
made
it
illegal
for
people
with
disabilities
to
appear
in
public—any
transgressions
that
once
seemed
ugly
now
look
like
progress.
Among
them:
the
seventeenth-century
Chinese
painting
Ten
Thousand
Ugly
Inkblots,
which
resembles
lauded
work
from
Jackson
Pollock,
and
the
music
once
described
as
'grunts
and
squeaks'
also
known
as
jazz.
'Rather
than
mere
binaries,'
Henderson
writes,
'ugliness
and
beauty
seem
to
function
more
like
binary
stars.
They
orbit
and
attract
each
other,
and
we
can
admire
both.'"
“A
multifarious
book
about
ugliness,
exploring
the
subject
in
its
multiple
forms
.
.
.
engagingly
written
and
copiously
illustrated.”
“Ugliness
is
in
the
eye
of
the
beholder—or
is
it?
Henderson’s
book
asks
this
central
question
and
answers
it
in
an
engaging
and
exciting
way.
Accessible
and
amusing,
you
need
to
read
it
to
find
out
whether
ugliness
is
only
a
cultural
or
a
brain
construct!”