An interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring the complex and conflicted topic of beauty in cultural, arts and medicine, looking back through the long cultural history of beauty, and asking whether it is possible to 'recover beauty'.

Elizabeth Archibald, Durham University, UKDavid Bintley, Birmingham Royal Ballet, UKDavid Fuller, University of Durham, UKSander L. Gilman, Emory University, USALudmilla Jordanova, Durham University, UKJane Macnaughton, Durham University, UKMark A. McIntosh, Loyola University Chicago, USAJohn Onians, University of East Anglia, UKMichael Symmons Roberts, Manchester Metropolitan University, UKCorinne Saunders, Durham University, UKRoger Scruton, independent scholar, UKSimon Thurley, English Heritage, UKAnne Whitehead, Newcastle University, UK

List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on the contributorsIntroduction; David Fuller, Corinne Saunders, Jane MacnaughtonPART I: MIND, BODY, SOUL1. Beautiful Ideas: The Visibility of Truth; Mark McIntosh2. Beauty, Virtue and Danger in Medieval English Romance; Corinne Saunders3.Bathing for Beauty in the Middle Ages; Elizabeth Archibald4. Posture is Beauty; Sander GilmanPART II: ART, IDEAS, IDEALS5. Beauty, Pain, and Violence: Through Lessing and Nietzsche to King Lear; David Fuller6. Beauty Writes Literary History: Revisiting the Myth of Bloomsbury; Patricia Waugh7. 'Raising Sparks'; An Interview with Michael Symmons Roberts8. 'More natural than nature, more artificial than art'; An Interview with David BintleyPART III: SURGERY, REPARATION, IMAGINATION9. 'Elegant' Surgery: The Beauty of Clinical Expertise; Jane Macnaughton10. Portraiture, Beauty, Pain; Ludmilla Jordanova11. War and Beauty: The Act of Unmasking in Pat Barker's Toby's Room and Louisa Young's My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You; Anne WhiteheadPART IV: RESCUING BEAUTY12. Beauty in the Brain of the Beholder: Art, Neural Plasticity and Visual Pleasure; John Onians13. The Pendulum of Taste: Architecture and the Rise of a State Aesthetic; Simon Thurley14. Beauty and the Sacred; Roger ScrutonBibliographyIndex