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Bettella, Patrizia. The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models in Italian Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (Toronto Italian Studies), 2005. viii + 260 pp. £40.00/$60.00. ISBN 0–8020–3926–X, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 4, October 2007, Page 470, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm072
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This extremely interesting monograph examines the construction of aesthetic models for the representation of women in direct opposition to conventional poetic categories. The study focuses on poetic texts mostly composed by male authorial voices. As the culturally hegemonic gender controlling aesthetic standards as well as intellectual paradigms, men were able not only to codify conventions but also to violate them. Defying canonical ideals of female beauty as glorified in traditional lyric poetry, the texts considered celebrate ugliness, unpleasantness and repulsiveness. However, as Bettella shows, the transgression of aesthetic standards actually constitutes a sanction of the social and cultural stereotypes which these texts apparently contradict. Ugliness, in fact, is used here to categorise the female sex as the other and therefore constructed as an anomaly, an abnormal deviation from the accepted and established criteria to which women are expected to conform. Thus, far from counteracting the male-centric stance that characterises tradition, the representation of ugliness endorses it with an even more misogynistic attitude, picturing the ugly woman as a rebellious and transgressive creature who poses a direct challenge not only to aesthetic conventions but also, more importantly, to social rule. In addition to its momentous findings, this investigation is also remarkable for its methodological significance, emphasising the broad cultural and ideological implications of negative stereotypes, especially in terms of gender identity and the construction of the patriarchal system.
