On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature

by Geoffrey Galt Harpham

In this comprehensive, original, and wide-ranging study, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that we should view the grotesque not as a marginal or aberrant form, but rather as a key to central concepts in the Western artistic tradition. With discussions of pictorial and narrative art, and readings of theoretical statements by Kant, Hegel, Ruskin and others, this book expands our concept of the grotesque, and enriches our understanding of art itself.

Genres: Art, Literary Criticism

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1982

Reviews

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can practically *smell* the tweed coming off this book. Erudite, comprehensive, and extremely ambitious. Harpham's varying formulations of the grotesque's "essence"--the grotesque as an interval, a process, a set of traits, and a historically contradictory term--set off nicely his poststructuralist idea that the grotesque is a metaphor for art's totality itself.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was clearly written as a call to other academics to further a field of study, but once acclimated to the slightly dry and erudite writing style this becomes a fascinating book. It spans genres of art looking for the origin, perpetuation, and implications of the grotesque. This is a good introductory book, and spawns many questions, points for investigation, creative ideas while taking the reader through history, art, literature, psychology, philosophy, myth, and magic. This is an interesting conversation because while there is much investigation on the concept of beauty and on ugliness, the grotesque is neither.

[Winter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly incredible.
My biggest struggle with this book is that it would so often describe images, without providing them. I imagined seeing a powerpoint alongside reading this work would've been very helpful! And seeing as a few were included, I can't imagine adding more for reference would be an issue.
Other than that, I found this a pretty comprehensive introduction to various theories on the grotesque, and how to handle contradiction!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is deeply old fashioned, but in a way that is helpful. Incredibly ambitious, and pulling heavily from the De Manian lexicon (but without pure fidelity to deconstruction), this is a valuable and fascinating attempt at thinking about "the Grotesque." For better or worse though, the concept gets so big that its hard for it to be useful.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

What does it mean to be grotesque? How do we understand it? This is not an easy to read book, but it does deal with a significant subject.