Description
MANCHESTER Plain Ugly The Unattractive Body in Early Modern Culture 2015 Edition by Naomi Baker
Plain ugly examines depictions of physically repellent characters in a striking range of early modern literary and visual texts, offering fascinating insights into the ways in which ugliness and deformity were perceived and represented, particularly with regard to gender and the construction of identity. Available in paperback for the first time, the book focuses closely on English literary culture but also engages with wider European perspectives, drawing on a wide array of primary sources including Italian and other European visual art. Offering illuminating close readings of texts from both high and low culture, it will interest scholars in English literature, cultural studies, women's studies, history and art history, as well as postgraduate and undergraduate students in these disciplines. As an accessible and absorbing account of the power dynamics informing depictions of ugliness (and beauty) in relation to some of the quirkiest literary and visual material to be found in early modern culture, it will also appeal to a wider audience. -- . Table of contents :- AcknowledgementsList of illustrationsIntroduction: ugly subjects in early modern England1. Theorising ugliness2. 'Charactered in my brow': deciphering ugly faces3. Opening the Silenus: gendering the ugly subject4. 'Sight of her is a vomit': abject bodies and Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy 5. 'To make love to a deformity': praising ugliness6. Sacrificing beauty: defeatured womenBibliographyIndex -- .