Wow! eBook
How Far Can We Go? Pain, Excess and the Obscene
Author(s): Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 4 April 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 190 pages
- ISBN-10: 9781443836432
- ISBN-13: 9781443836432
Book Description
The public does not desire horror, yet enjoys it in art and suffers it in life. When we deal with the monstrous marriage of the abject and the sublime, the consequent thrill of enjoyment is never appeased, always problematic, often unresolved and finally borders on physiological if not pathological narcissism. The public is well acquainted with this ‘rhetoric of effects’; rhetoric of extreme effects, which transforms the spectator into voyeur or victim, into an apathetic torturer, whenever cruelty is shown without respite. A look of horror greets the enjoyment of extremes and enjoyment to the extreme as well; the Eighteenth Century teaches us that lesson. The century of good taste elaborates a sense of the limits, since representing horror means choosing not so much to domesticate it as to render it more enjoyable. It is a game of limits that are not limits anymore, as we can allude to an infinity that often shows the features of the sublime.
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About the Author
Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis is an essayist and a leading scholar in her field. She is Professor of Esthetics and the Esthetics of the Performing Arts at Milan University (Università degli Studi di Milano). She has published, amongst other things, Forma come destino (Firenze, 1998), Deformazioni fantastiche (Milano, 1999), Voyeurismo Tattile. Un’estetica dei valori tattili e visivi (Genova, 2002), Animalità. Idee estetiche sull’anima degli animali (Firenze, 2003), Gli enigmi della forma (Milano, 1995; reprint: Milano, 2005), Estetica. Temi e problemi (Firenze, 2006), Corpo e voce della passione. L’estetica attoriale di Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (Milano, 2010), Estetica, with Elio Franzini (2nd edition: Milano, 2010), Il gonzo sublime. Dal patetico al kitsch (Milano, 2005; French translation: Paris, 2010), Mostro. L’anomalia e il deforme nella natura e nell’arte (2nd edition: Milano, 2012), and Il senso del limite (Firenze, 2009; French translation: Paris, 2012).
