The ugly in fine arts. The sensory nature of terror in the tales of the Brothers Grimm

• Main Author: Anita Szwajkowska
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lodz University Press 2017-09-01
• Series: Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica
• Subjects: fairy tales; ugliness; aesthetics; Grimm; aesthetic value; sensory vision
• Online Access: https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/polonica/article/view/2690

The author, inspired by philosophical aesthetic reflection, presents one of the aesthetic qualities: ugliness. Based on the assumption that “Grimms’ Fairy Tales” directly reach the realm of the unconscious, utilising towards that end not only symbolic meaning, but also a wide range of operations through imagined sensory perception, she identifies in the texts such fragments of the stories which relate to specific sensations caused in the real world using physical stimuli. The analysis constitutes only a case-based introductory study of the issue of senses in literary texts. She does not focus on the tale as an independent existential creation, which carries a multitude of interpretative references and meanings, only the possibilities offered by the analysis of a work, which consists of a transfer of a literary description to the imagination of the sensory experience occurring (hypothetically) in the receiver’s imagination.