Description
Book SynopsisDisgust is among the strongest of aversions, characterized by involuntary physical recoil and even nausea. Yet paradoxically, disgusting objects can sometimes exert a grisly allure, and this emotion can constitute a positive, appreciative aesthetic response when exploited by works of art -- a phenomenon labelled here aesthetic disgust. While the reactive, visceral quality of disgust contributes to its misleading reputation as a relatively primitive response mechanism, it is this feature that also gives it a particular aesthetic power when manifest in art. Most treatments of disgust mistakenly interpret it as only an extreme response, thereby neglecting the many subtle ways that it operates aesthetically. This study calls attention to the diversity and depth of its uses, analyzing the emotion in detail and considering the enormous variety of aesthetic forms it can assume in works of art and --unexpectedly-- even in foods. In the process of articulating a positive role for disgust, this
Table of ContentsChapter 1 What Is Disgust? ; Chapter 2 Attractive Aversions ; Chapter 3 Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting ; Chapter 4 Varieties of Aesthetic Disgust ; Chapter 5 The Magnetism of Disgust ; Chapter 6 Hearts ; Chapter 7 The Foul and the Fair ; Bibliography
