Chronicles of a Liquid Society

Umberto Eco; Translator-Alastair Mcewen

In a companion volume to his "History of Beauty," the renowned philosopher and cultural critic analyzes our attraction to the gruesome, horrific, and repellant in visual culture and the arts, drawing on abundant examples of painting and sculpture, ranging from antiquity to the works of Bosch, Goya, and others Lire plus…

Umberto Eco; With Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, Christine Brooke-Rose; Edited By Stefan Collini

The limits of interpretation--what a text can actually be said to mean--are of double interest to a semiotician whose own novels' intriguing complexity has provoked his readers into intense speculation as to their meaning. Eco's illuminating and frequently hilarious discussion ranges from Dante to The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, to Chomsky and Derrida, and bears all the hallmarks of his inimitable personal style. Three of the world's leading figures in philosophy, literary theory and criticism take up the challenge of entering into debate with Eco on the question of interpretation. Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler and Christine Brooke-Rose each add a distinctive perspective on this contentious topic, contributing to a unique exchange of ideas among some of the foremost and most exciting theorists in the field. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco (Robert Lumley, Ed.)

I would like to dedicate the book to those critics whom I have so summarily defined as apocalyptics. Without their unjust, biased, neurotic, desperate censure, I would never have elaborated three quarters of the ideas that I want to share here; without them, perhaps none of us would have realized that the question of mass culture is one in which we are all deeply involved. It is a sign of contradiction in our civilization. - Umberto Eco. This is a witty and erudite collection of Umberto Eco's essays on mass culture from the 1960s through the 1980s, including major pieces never before published in English. The discussion is framed by opposing characterizations of current intellectuals as either apocalyptic (or opposed to all mass culture) or integrated intellectuals (who are so much a part of mass culture as to be unaware of serving it). Organized into four main parts - "Mass Culture: Apocalypse Postponed," "Mass Media and the Limits of Communication," "The Rise and Fall of Countercultures," and "In Search of Italian Genius" - Eco's essays look at a variety of topics and cultural productions, including the world of Charlie Brown, distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow, the future of literacy, Chinese comic strips, whether countercultures exist, Fellini's "Ginger and Fred", and the Italian genius industry. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco; Translated By William Weaver

Best-selling author Umberto Eco's latest work unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the "linguistics of the lunatic," stories told by scholars, scientists, poets, fanatics, and ordinary people in order to make sense of the world. Exploring the "Force of the False," Eco uncovers layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, such as Columbus's assumption that the world was much smaller than it is, leading him to seek out a quick route to the East via the West and thus fortuitously "discovering" America. The fictions that grew up around the cults of the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar were the result of a letter from a mysterious "Prester John" -- undoubtedly a hoax -- that provided fertile ground for a series of delusions and conspiracy theories based on religious, ethnic, and racial prejudices. While some false tales produce new knowledge (like Columbus's discovery of America) and others create nothing but horror and shame (the Rosicrucian story wound up fueling European anti-Semitism) they are all powerfully persuasive.In a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, Eco shows us how serendipities -- unanticipated truths -- often spring from mistaken ideas. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Eco tours the labyrinth of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange.Eco uncovers a rich history of linguistic... Lire plus…

Umberto Eco, Alastair Mcewen

Beauty is neither a history of art, nor a history of aesthetics but Umberto Eco draws on the histories of both these disciplines to define the ideas of beauty that have informed sensibilities from the classical world to modern times. In terms of form and style, Beauty has been conceived for a vast and diversified readership: taking in painting, sculpture, architecture, film, photography, the decorative arts, novels and poems, it offers a rich and intelligent panorama of this huge subject. It traces the philosophy of aesthetics through history and examines some of the many treatises that have sought to define it. Beauty is Umberto Eco at his most captivating and eclectic: we read not only of Botticelli and Michelangelo but of how the fashion of the 1960s owes much to ancient Egyptian dress, and how ancient Roman and eighteenth-century hairstyles have much in common. It makes the familiar new, and sheds a brilliant new light on the unfamiliar. Illustrated in full colour throughout and produced to the highest standards, Beauty is an indispensable book. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco, Alastair Mcewen

How do we know a cat is a cat? And why do we call it a cat? How much of our perception of things is based on cognitive ability, and how much on linguistic resources? Here, in six remarkable essays, Umberto Eco explores in depth questions of reality, perception, and experience. Basing his ideas on common sense, Eco shares a vast wealth of literary and historical knowledge, touching on issues that affect us every day. At once philosophical and amusing, Kant and the Platypus is a tour of the world of our senses, told by a master of knowing what is real and what is not. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco

"... not merely interesting and novel, but also exceedingly provocative and heuristically fertile." -- The Review of Metaphysics"... essential reading for anyone interesting in... the new reader-centered forms of criticism." -- Library JournalIn this erudite and imaginative book, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between 'open' and 'closed' texts. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco; American Council Of Learned Societies

"Eco's essays read like letters from a friend, trying to share something he loves with someone he likes.... Read this brilliant, enjoyable, and possibly revolutionary book." — George J. Leonard, San Francisco Review of Books "... a wealth of insight and instruction." — J. O. Tate, National Review "If anyone can make [semiotics] clear, it's Professor Eco.... Professor Eco's theme deserves respect; language should be used to communicate more easily without literary border guards." — The New York Times "The limits of interpretation mark the limits of our world. Umberto Eco's new collection of essays touches deftly on such matters." — Times Literary Supplement "It is a careful and challenging collection of essays that broach topics rarely considered with any seriousness by literary theorists." — Diacritics Umberto Eco focuses here on what he once called "the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation" — that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication. Herbert Mitgang Admirers of Mr. Eco's two original novels will look in vain for the same joy of fictional daring in "The Limits of Interpretation"...The essays in "The Limits of Interpretation" discuss television serials, archeology, Joyce's "Finnegans Wake," Pirandello's plays, art, fakes and forgeries. His observations on literature and television are particularly informative...Professor Eco devises a Model Reader who must have a... Lire plus…

Umberto Eco; Translated From The Italian By Richard Dixon

The Prague Cemetery (Italian: Il cimitero di Praga) is a novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It was first published in October 2010; the English translation by Richard Dixon appeared a year later. Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012, it has been described as Eco's best novel since The Name of the Rose. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco And Thomas A. Sebeok (Editors)

" . . . fascinating throughout. . . . the book is recreative in the highest sense." Arthur C. Danto, The New Republic "A gem for Holmes fans and armchair detectives with a penchant for logical reflection, and Peirce scholars." Library Journal Lire plus…

Umberto Eco, Anthony Oldcorn

The way we create and organize knowledge is the theme of __From the Tree to the Labyrinth__, a major achievement by one of the world's foremost thinkers on language and interpretation. Umberto Eco begins by arguing that our familiar system of classification by genus and species derives from the Neo-Platonist idea of a "tree of knowledge." He then moves to the idea of the dictionary, which--like a tree whose trunk anchors a great hierarchy of branching categories--orders knowledge into a matrix of definitions. In Eco's view, though, the dictionary is too rigid: it turns knowledge into a closed system. A more flexible organizational scheme is the encyclopedia, which­--instead of resembling a tree with finite branches--offers a labyrinth of never-ending pathways. Presenting knowledge as a network of interlinked relationships, the encyclopedia sacrifices humankind's dream of possessing absolute knowledge, but in compensation we gain the freedom to pursue an infinity of new connections and meanings. Moving effortlessly from analyses of Aristotle and James Joyce to the philosophical difficulties of telling dogs from cats, Eco demonstrates time and again his inimitable ability to bridge ancient, medieval, and modern modes of thought. __From the Tree to the Labyrinth__ is a brilliant illustration of Eco's longstanding argument that problems of interpretation can be solved only in historical context. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco

"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature . . . this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." Times Literary Supplement Lire plus…

Umberto Eco

"... the greatest contribution to [semiotics] since the pioneering work of C. S. Peirce and Charles Morris." -Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism"... draws on philosophy, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and aesthetics and refers to a wide range of scholarship... raises many fascinating questions." -Language in Society"... a major contribution to the field of semiotic studies." -Robert Scholes, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism"...the most significant text on the subject published in the English language that I know of." -Arthur Asa Berger, Journal of CommunicationEco's treatment demonstrates his mastery of the field of semiotics. It focuses on the twin problems of the doctrine of signs-communication and signification-and offers a highly original theory of sign production, including a carefully wrought typology of signs and modes of production. Lire plus…

Umberto Eco; Translated By Anna Cancogni; With An Introduction By David Robey

More than twenty years after its original appearance in Italian, The Open Work remains significant for its powerful concept of "openness"--the artist's decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance--and for its striking anticipation of two major themes of contemporary literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interactive process between reader and text. The questions Umberto Eco raises, and the answers he suggests, are intertwined in the continuing debate on literature, art, and culture in general. This entirely new edition, edited for the English-language audience with the approval of Eco himself, includes an authoritative introduction by David Robey that explores Eco's thought at the period of The Open Work, prior to his absorption in semiotics. The book now contains key essays on Eco's mentor Luigi Pareyson, on television and mass culture, and on the politics of art. Harvard University Press will publish separately and simultaneously the extended study of James Joyce that was originally part of The Open Work, entitled The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce. The Open Work explores a set of issues in aesthetics that remain central to critical theory, and does so in a characteristically vivid style. Eco's convincing manner of presenting ideas and his instinct for the lively example are threaded compellingly throughout. This book is at once... Lire plus…

Umberto Eco; Translated By James Fentress

The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as... Lire plus…

Umberto Eco, William Weaver (Translation)

It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story. Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts--a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander--who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa--adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends. Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East--a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens. As always with Eco, this abundant novel includes dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age. This is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best. International Bestseller Lire plus…

Umberto Eco; Translated By Alastair Mcewen

Trans. Alastair McEwen In this book Umberto Eco argues that translation is not about comparing two languages, but about the interpretation of a text in two different languages, thus involving a shift between cultures. An author whose works have appeared in many languages, Eco is also the translator of Gérard de Nerval's Sylvie and Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style from French into Italian. In Experiences in Translation he draws on his substantial practical experience to identify and discuss some central problems of translation. As he convincingly demonstrates, a translation can express an evident deep sense of a text even when violating both lexical and referential faithfulness. Depicting translation as a semiotic task, he uses a wide range of source materials as illustration: the translations of his own and other novels, translations of the dialogue of American films into Italian, and various versions of the Bible. In the second part of his study he deals with translation theories proposed by Jakobson, Steiner, Peirce, and others. Overall, Eco identifies the different types of interpretive acts that count as translation. An enticing new typology emerges, based on his insistence on a common-sense approach and the necessity of taking a critical stance. Lire plus…