Erudite like Echo also had his starting point, which was medieval aesthetics.
Echo opposed viewing the Middle Ages as a "period of obscurantism" and instead as a crucible of modern European civilization.
Recently, the classic work "The Beauty of the Middle Ages" by Italian national treasure writer Umberto Echo was published by Yilin Publishing House. The book is Echo's monograph on medieval artistic concepts and works, which not only subverts the old concept that "the Middle Ages are dark ages" through informative documentary examination and artistic examples, but also quotes in detail how the aesthetic experience of the Middle Ages inherits the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, and has an impact on future generations with its own unique speculativeness.
Umberto Eco (born in 1932 in Alexandria, Italy) is a world-renowned philosopher, aesthete, medievalist and novelist. He was hailed by the Cambridge History of Italian Literature as "the most dazzling Italian writer of the second half of the 20th century". The works are both vast and complex, so that readers can enjoy the fun and charm of traveling through the ancient and modern worlds. Representative works include "The Name of the Rose", "Foucault Pendulum", "The History of Beauty", "The History of The Ugly", "The Memory of Plants and The Music of Books".
Italian national treasure writer Umberto Echo
The beauty of the Middle Ages, in Echo's pen, presented itself with its own dynamism, inheriting the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, quietly evolving in a dogmatic ideological environment until a mature and critical system of ideas developed, making a revision of the traditions inherited by the modern era based on the medieval vision.
Echo's discourse draws on theological, poetic, mystical, and Platonic currents from medieval texts, and he explores works of art ranging from churches, sculptures, jewelry, paintings, music, and codices. After echoing and interpreting it, the flow of medieval aesthetic ideas and works of art overflows with a primitive and unique beauty, and its meticulousness and universality can inspire fresh insights in us today.
In the preface to The Beauty of the Middle Ages, Echo writes: "I have been trying to show how theories circulating in that era relate to the sensibility and artistic achievements of reality. I expounded aesthetic theory in order to discover how consistent and out of touch with the reality of that era, and to discover the meaningful connection between medieval aesthetics and other aspects of medieval culture and civilization. ”
Inside the book
In Echo's writing, the Middle Ages present us with a vast aesthetic system: the beauty of light in color, the beauty of proportion in composition, the beauty of transcendence of divinity, and the beauty of the organism of the universe. These systematic aesthetic ideas are contained in more than 160 high-definition art pictures carefully selected in this book, helping readers to understand medieval art more intuitively and deeply.
Fan Jingzhong, a professor at the China Academy of Art and an expert in art history, commented: "The Middle Ages is the century of the cathedral, the tree of God, a thousand branches in the sky, and the leaves are scattered; the Middle Ages is the century of the great castle, and the broken wall boulders are inscribed with the Yuyu Yuyu that looms in the depths of time; the Middle Ages is the century of manuscripts, and the mysterious words are silently exalted on the splendid parchment." Echo wanders through churches and castles, turning the dusty pages of books to write about medieval art, introducing the reader to the Sanctuary for a glimpse of the divine light of art. ”
It is reported that the English version of the book received a high score of 4.6 points on Amazon in the United States, with a 5-point praise rate of 72%, and received 1254 reviews and 57 long book reviews on the mainstream book social media Goodreads.