On Eco's "On Ugliness"

The recently translated edition of Umberto Eco's book, On Ugliness, contains a great deal of interest to the weird connoisseur. In this tome, the prolific philosopher-scholar acts as editor, carefully selecting depictions in art, literature, and society of ugliness. He also charts an excellent intellectual history of the bizarre and unpleasant; placing primitive conceptions of the hideous, Medieval European horrors unleashed on the human psyche by the great plague and religious wars, and the murkier modern love-hate dance around the ugly in their proper contexts.

Though long philosophical tracts are absent in this book, it doesn't suffer for it. Eco's analytical commentary suffices for a fair overview of the undesirable, while generous doses of grotesque images support his historical observations about the aesthetic evolution of the ugly. I admit to not yet looking through the whole work thoroughly, but from what I've observed thus far, this text is an invaluable companion to lovers of strange art and literature. More importantly, it doubles as a makeshift history of the outre--an effective addition to the reference libraries of any appreciating traditional catalogs of the weird, starting with H.P. Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature." For the record, Lovecraft earned mention in Eco's study, particularly the repulsive features of Wilbur Whateley in "The Dunwich Horror."

-Grim Blogger