Beautiful Ugliness : Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts / Mark William Roche.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roche, Mark William, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion.

Christianity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (520 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2023]

Summary:

This book probes the intersection of the beautiful and the ugly, offering a systematic framework to understand, interpret, and evaluate how ugliness can contribute to beautiful art.Many great artworks include elements of ugliness: repugnant content, disproportionate forms, unresolved dissonance, and unintegrated parts. Mark William Roche's authoritative monograph Beautiful Ugliness: Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts challenges current practices of the dominant aesthetic schools by exploring the role of ugliness in art and literature. Roche offers a comprehensive and unique framework that integrates philosophical and theological reflection, intellectual-historical analysis, and interpretations of a large number of works from the arts. The study is driven by the recognition that, though ugliness is usually understood as the opposite of beauty, ugliness nonetheless contributes significantly to the beauty of many artworks.Roche's analysis unfolds in three parts. The first offers a refreshing conceptual analysis of ugliness in art. The second considers the history of ugliness in art and literature, with special attention to its role in Christian art and its central place in modern and contemporary art. The third synthesizes earlier material, offering a taxonomy of beautiful ugliness derived from Hegelian philosophical categories. Roche mesmerizes the reader with an extraordinary range of literary scholarship and expertise, with a particular focus on English, Latin, and German literature, and with a broad range of analyzed phenomena, including fine arts, architecture, and music.Including 63 color illustrations, Beautiful Ugliness will draw in readers from multiple disciplines as well as those from beyond the academy who wish to make sense of today's complex art world.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations and Translations

Introduction

Part I. Conceptual Framework

One: Unveiling Ugliness

Two: Aesthetic Categories

Three: Intellectual Resources

Part II. The History of Beautiful Ugliness

Four: Imperial Rome

Five: Late Medieval Christianity

Six: The Theological Rationale for Christianity's Immersion in Ugliness

Historical Interlude

Seven: Modernity

Eight: Modernity's Ontological and Aesthetic Shift

Part III. Forms of Beautiful Ugliness

Styles of Beautiful Ugliness

Nine: Repugnant Beauty

Ten: Fractured Beauty

Eleven: Aischric Beauty

Structures of Beautiful Ugliness

Twelve: Beauty Dwelling in Ugliness

Thirteen: Dialectical Beauty

Fourteen: Speculative Beauty

Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index

About the Author.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780268207038

0268207038

9780268207007

0268207003