On Ugliness Online

The book organizes its "lexicon of the repellent" into several recurring categories:

Book review: "On Ugliness" by Umberto Eco - Patrick T. Reardon On Ugliness

: Eco suggests that while we can observe beauty dispassionately, ugliness forces an immediate, visceral emotional response—typically disgust, fear, or repulsion . The book organizes its "lexicon of the repellent"

: What one era found monstrous, another might find fascinating or even "camp." For instance, ancient Greek tragedy used ugliness (like Oedipus's blinded face) to achieve catharsis , heightening the emotional impact of drama. Eco argues that while beauty is often defined

Eco argues that while beauty is often defined by a set of harmonious rules (symmetry, proportion, light), . The book serves as a companion to his previous work, On Beauty , and functions as an encyclopedic taxonomy of the grotesque through art and literature.

A write-up for (originally Storia della bruttezza ), the seminal 2007 work edited by philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco , explores the historical, cultural, and aesthetic evolution of what humans find repellent . Core Thesis and Structure