Humour thus indicates the aesthetic measure, as seen in the costumbrist descriptions or the art of caricature, where women and enemies are easy targets of jokes about ugliness. That is why everything monstrous or disgusting links to hell, the art of death and demon exaggerates the horrific features of this sphere to instill the fear of the believers, to prevent them from being tempted.Ī second topic begins in chapter 5, with the association between ugly and obscenity, and also absurdity, which can make people laugh. Only sin and suffering are ugly because they move away from the precepts of faith. Ugliness is not only in the physical but also in the moral sense, Christianity denies to some extent the existence of ugliness, since the whole universe is a divine work and God can not create something ugly if He is a perfect being. The first chapter approaches the Greek conception of beauty, trying to discern by opposition what is ugly, and ugliness is associated with the lack of harmony according to ancient Greeks. Synopsis Įco begins with an introduction trying to define the idea of ugliness, to verify that it is a polysemic concept, and that is associated with emotional expressions such as rejection or disgust which impede a rational approach. 'Ugliness is more fun than beauty', said Eco himself and some other reviews.

Like the previous work, this essay combines literary excerpts and illustrations of artworks from ancient times to the present to define the concept of what it means to be ugly. The book is a continuation of Eco's 2004 aesthetic work On Beauty: A History of a Western Idea. On Ugliness ( Italian: Storia della bruttezza) is a 2007 essay by Italian author Umberto Eco, originally published by Bompiani in 2007.

History of beauty by umberto eco