ABSTRACT
Title: The Aesthetics of Ugliness
Against the backdrop of eighteenth century history, philosophy
and literature, this dissertation investigates the changing discourse
concerning ugliness. Specifically, this study examines how the previously
negligible role of ugliness develops into a functional one within aesthetics
and Enlightenment culture; further, ugliness comes to manifest itself
formally and thematically in literature.
This investigation focuses on four authors that epitomized the
interstices between culture critique and aesthetic philosophy: Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist and Mary
Shelley. This project consists of four chapters, which focuses on these
authors who challenged the normative constraints of representation by
reappropriating ugliness. Each chapter focuses on a specific type of
ugliness: Jewish, criminal, female, and foreign ugliness. Chapter 1,
which is a discussion about Gottfried Ephraim Lessing's Nathan der
Weise, examines the connection between Jewishness and ugliness. Using
Moses Mendelssohn as his model for Nathan, Lessing shows how racial
stereotypes adversely affect society. Chapter 2 focuses on Friedrich
Schiller's aesthetic essays and his novella "Der Vebrecher aus verlorener
Ehre" in order to demonstrate the fallacy between the Enlightenment
project of tolerance and the pernicious connection between ugliness and