Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages by Umberto

Eco

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Original Title: Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages

ISBN: 0300093047
ISBN13: 9780300093049
Autor: Umberto Eco/Hugh Bredin (Translator)
Rating: 4.9 of 5 stars (112) counts
Original Format: Paperback, 144 pages
Download Format: PDF, RTF, ePub, CHM, MP3.
Published: February 8th 2002 / by Yale University Press / (first published 1986)
Language: English
Genre(s):
Art- 69 users
History- 64 users
Nonfiction- 38 users
Philosophy- 25 users
Historical Fiction >Medieval- 25 users
Art >Art History- 14 users
Historical >Middle Ages- 10 users

Description:

In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco
presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. Juxtaposing theology and science,
poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories
and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture.
[A] delightful study. . . . [Eco s] remarkably lucid and readable essay is full of contemporary
relevance and informed by the energies of a man in love with his subject. Robert Taylor, Boston
Globe
The book lays out so many exciting ideas and interesting facts that readers will find it gripping.
Washington Post Book World
A lively introduction to the subject. Michael Camille, The Burlington Magazine
If you want to become acquainted with medieval aesthetics, you will not find a more scrupulously
researched, better written (or better translated), intelligent and illuminating introduction than Eco s
short volume. D. C. Barrett, Art Monthly"

About Author:

Umberto Eco was an Italian writer of fiction, essays, academic texts, and children's books, and
certainly one of the finest authors of the twentieth century. A professor of semiotics at the
University of Bologna, Ecos brilliant fiction is known for its playful use of language and symbols,
its astonishing array of allusions and references, and clever use of puzzles and narrative
inventions. His perceptive essays on modern culture are filled with a delightful sense of humor and
irony, and his ideas on semiotics, interpretation, and aesthetics have established his reputation as
one of academias foremost thinkers.

Other Editions:

- Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (Paperback)

- Arte y belleza en la esttica medieval (Paperback)

- Arte e bellezza nell\'estetica medievale (Paperback)

- Kunst und Schnheit im Mittelalter (Paperback)

- Art et beaut dans l\'esthtique mdivale (Mass Market Paperback)

Books By Author:
- The Name of the Rose

- Foucault's Pendulum

- History of Beauty

- Baudolino
 - On Ugliness

Books In The Series:

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- Dante: Poet of the Secular World

- The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

 - The Age of Reform, 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late
Medieval and Reformation Europe

- Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in

Medieval Religion

- From Memory to Written Record: England 1066 - 1307

- Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570

- The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture

- The Making of the Middle Ages

- The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century

- Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Sicle Culture

 - Letters on Czanne

- Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

- A History of Illuminated Manuscripts

Rewiews:
Sep 30, 2013
Sara
Rated it: really liked it
Shelves: medieval-history, art-history, umberto-eco
Umberto Eco wrote this short treatise 50-some years ago. It was re-released in the 80s (after the
success of Name of the Rose, I hazard the guess?) in a new translation with a new, humble
introduction by the author. It is still an engaging read for anyone interested in medieval art or the
development, in general, of western aesthetics.
Like most medievalists, Eco writes of medieval thought as though he were defending its
intelligence, complexity and dignity from virulent detractors. It has been a
Umberto Eco wrote this short treatise 50-some years ago. It was re-released in the 80s (after the
success of Name of the Rose, I hazard the guess?) in a new translation with a new, humble
introduction by the author. It is still an engaging read for anyone interested in medieval art or the
development, in general, of western aesthetics.
Like most medievalists, Eco writes of medieval thought as though he were defending its
intelligence, complexity and dignity from virulent detractors. It has been a rarely-taught and poorly
(or prejudicially) understood historical whipping boy for centuries. I'm not convinced this de rigueur
combative stance is any less necessary these days. Every other period after the fall of Rome and
before the industrial revolution seems to have joined the lonely Middle Ages in terms of
representing (to the ill-informed modern imagination) all things backward, superstitious and
hopelessly ignorant. In any event, the Middle Ages still gets wildly inaccurate and fanciful
treatment in film and literature, and academics who do not explicitly study the Middle Ages tend to
look at it as niche, useless to broader inquiries, or otherwise irrelevant to anything but the study of
itself.
In this interesting brief volume, Eco traces the development of theories of aesthetics and art from
the late Classical period through the high Middle Ages. In doing so, he depicts a people dwelling in
an integrated world where "beautiful" and "useful" are synonymous and where man's creation is
wan mimicry of God's creation which is, in turn, only a veil of seeming over God's even more
perfect ideal. But he also depicts an intellectual world that, far from stagnant or over-determined
by dogma, was capable of growth, of subtlety and of pure joy at contemplating physical (natural or
artistic) beauty. In fact, he finds in the Middle Ages the seeds of artistic individualism, in art's move
from the monastery or workshop to the autocrat's court, that would famously sprout into the
effective cult status of Renaissance and later artists.
Medieval thought, on art and beauty as on everything else, was in answer to highly specific and
Judeo-Christo-centric theological problems. For the most part, we are asking different kinds of
ontological questions these days. But this fact does not make medieval answers to medieval
questions any less reasoned or any more fallacious. In fact, their questions and answers might
even prove enlightening to us if we, for a moment, imagine our own period as one that suffers from
a lack of an idea taken quite for granted by medieval European culture - the integrative quality of
art, life, creation and morality.
In any event, if we cultivate a modicum of knowledge about our medieval ancestors, it might be
easier to realize when our own ignorance - not their illogicality or irrelevance - is the thing
precluding us from a deeper understanding of them.
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