The Beauty of the Middle Ages Author: [Italy] Umberto Eco Publisher: Yilin Press

Introduction
This book is Eco's work on medieval aesthetic theory, aesthetic experience and artistic practice. In Eco's writing, medieval beauty presents a unique vitality. It inherits the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, and quietly evolves in a dogmatic ideological environment until it develops a mature and critical system of concepts, which makes corrections to the traditions inherited by modern times based on the perspective of the Middle Ages.
Eco's discussion draws on theology, poetics, mysticism, and Platonism from medieval texts, and the works of art he explores include churches, sculptures, jewelry, paintings, music, and ancient manuscripts. After Eco's interpretation and explanation, medieval aesthetics and works of art exude an original and unique beauty, and its meticulousness and universality can inspire fresh insights in us even today.
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The Middle Ages was the century of cathedrals, the tree of God, with thousands of branches and leaves; the Middle Ages was the century of castles, with broken walls and huge rocks engraved with weapons and axes that were vaguely imprinted in the depths of time; the Middle Ages was the century of manuscripts, with mysterious words quietly standing majestically on brilliant parchment. Eco wandered in churches and castles, opened dusty pages, wrote about medieval art, and led readers into the sanctuary to glimpse the divine light of art.
——Fan Jingzhong, professor at China Academy of Art
Eco's "The Beauty of the Middle Ages" leads readers out of two common misunderstandings: First, aesthetics did not exist in the Middle Ages; second, even if it did, it was intellectual beauty that replaced the aesthetic sensibility in the secular sense.
——Shen Yubing, distinguished professor at Fudan University, scholar of art history and aesthetics
As learned as Eco is, he also had his starting point, which was medieval aesthetics. He opposed the view of the Middle Ages as a "barbaric period" and regarded it as the crucible of modern European civilization. The beauty of numbers in Pythagoreanism, the beauty of humanity in the Carolingian Renaissance, the beauty of order in Eriugena, and until Thomas Aquinas, the huge system of medieval scholastic aesthetics was established. This is the second book of Eco, who has written many books, after his doctoral thesis. He said self-deprecatingly: "I told a story in the clumsy way of a young scholar, but to this day, I still believe in this story." - To this day, we still believe in Eco.
——Ma Ling, professor at Fudan University, book reviewer, and leader of the Douban Eco team
This easy-to-read work remains relevant today, and Eco clearly had a passion for medieval art.
--Robert Taylor, book review columnist for The Boston Globe
If you are a reader who wants to understand medieval aesthetics, you will find no book on the market more cautious, more beautiful, more sophisticated, and more inspiring than Eco's work.
——AC Barrett, book reviewer for Art Monthly