Eco, Umberto 1932-
ECO, Umberto 1932-
PERSONAL: Born January 5, 1932, in Alessandria, Italy; son of Giulio and Giovanna (Bisio) Eco; married Renate Ramge (a teacher) September 24, 1962; children: Stefano, Carlotta. Education: University of Turin, Ph.D., 1954.
ADDRESSES: Office—Universita di Bologna, Via Toffano 2, Bologna, Italy.
CAREER: Italian Radio-Television (RAI), Milan, Italy, editor for cultural programs, 1954-59; University of Turin, Turin, Italy, assistant lecturer, 1956-63, lecturer in aesthetics, 1963-64; Casa Editore Bompiani (publisher), Milan, Italy, nonfiction senior editor, 1959-75; University of Milan, lecturer in architecture, 1964-65; University of Florence, Florence, Italy, professor of visual communications, 1966-69; Milan Polytechnic, professor of semiotics, 1969-71; University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, associate professor, 1971-75, professor of semiotics, 1975—, director of doctorate program in semiotics, 1986—, chair of Corso di Laurea in Scienze della comunicazione, 1993—, founder of publishing-studies program, 2003. Visiting professor, New York University, 1969, 1976, Northwestern University, 1972, University of California, San Diego, 1975, Yale University, 1977, 1980, 1981, and Columbia University, 1978; visiting fellow at Italian Academy and Columbia University. Lecturer on semiotics at various institutions throughout the world, including Tanner Lecturer, Cambridge University, 1990, Norton Lecturer, Harvard University, 1992-93, University of Antwerp, École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, University of London, Nobel Foundation, University of Warsaw, University of Budapest, University of Toronto, Murdoch University/Perth, and Amherst College. Member of the Council for the United States and Italy. Military service: Italian Army, 1958-59.
MEMBER: International Association for Semiotic Studies (secretary-general, 1972-79; vice president, 1979—), James Joyce Foundation (honorary trustee).
AWARDS, HONORS: Premio Strega and Premio Anghiari, both 1981, both for Il Nome della rosa; named honorary citizen of Monte Cerignone, Italy, 1982; Prix Medicis for best foreign novel, 1982, for French version of Il Nome della rosa; Los Angeles Times fiction prize nomination, 1983, and best fiction book award from Association of Logos Bookstores, both for The Name of the Rose; Marshall McLuhan Teleglobe Canada Award from UNESCO's Canadian Commission, 1985, for achievement in communications; Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 1985; Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (France), 1993; Golden Cross of the Dodecannese, Patmos (Greece), 1995; Cavaliere di Gran Croce al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, 1996; honorary degrees from Catholic University, Leuven, 1985, Odense University, 1986, Loyola University, Chicago, 1987, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987, Royal College of Arts, London, 1987, Brown University, 1988, University of Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1989, University of Glasgow, 1990, University of Tel Aviv and University of Buenos Aires, both 1994, and University of Athens, Laurentian University at Sudbury, Ontario, and Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, all 1996.
WRITINGS:
in italian
Filosofi in liberta, Taylor (Turin, Italy), 1958, 2nd edition, 1959.
Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teoria della cultura di massa, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1964, revised edition, 1977.
Le Poetiche di Joyce, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1965, 2nd edition published as Le Poetiche di Joyce dalla "Summa" al "Finnegan's Wake," 1966.
Appunti per una semiologia delle comunicazioni visive (also see below), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1967.
(Author of introduction) Mimmo Castellano, Noi vivi, Dedalo Libri, 1967.
(Coeditor) Storia figurata delle invenzioni. Dalla selce scheggiata al volo spaziale, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1968.
La Struttura assente (includes Appunti per una semiologia delle comunicazioni visive), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1968, revised edition, 1983.
La Definizione dell'arte (title means "The Definition of Art"), U. Mursia, 1968, reprinted, Garzanti, 1978.
(Editor) L'Uomo e l'arte, Volume 1: L'Arte come mestiere, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1969.
(Editor, with Remo Faccani) I Sistemi di segni e lo strutturalismo sovietico, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1969, 2nd edition published as Semiotica della letteratura in URSS, 1974.
(Editor) L'Industria della cultura, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1969.
(Editor) Dove e quando? Indagine sperimentale su due diverse edizioni di un servizio di "Almanacco," RAI, 1969.
(Editor) Socialismo y consolacion: Reflexiones en torno a "Los Misterios de Paris" de Eugene Sue, Tusquets, 1970, 2nd edition, 1974.
Le Forme del contenuto, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1971.
(Editor, with Cesare Sughi) Cent'anni dopo: Il ritorno dell'intreccio, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1971.
Il Segno, Isedi, 1971, 2nd edition, Mondadori (Milan, Italy).
(Editor, with M. Bonazzi) I Pampini bugiardi, Guaraldi, 1972.
(Editor) Estetica e teoria dell'informazione, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1972.
(Editor) Eugenio Carmi: Una Pittura de paesaggio?, G. Prearo, 1973.
Il Costume di casa: Evidenze e misteri dell'ideologia italiano, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1973.
Beato di Liebana: Miniature del Beato de Fernando I y Sancha, F. M. Ricci, 1973.
Cristianesimo e politica: Esame della presente situazione culturale, G. B. Vico, 1976.
(Coeditor) Storia di una rivoluzione mai esistita l'esperimento Vaduz, Servizio Opinioni, RAI, 1976.
Dalla periferia dell'impero, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1976.
Come si fa una tesi di laurea, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1977.
(Coeditor) Le Donne al muro: L'Immagine femminile nel manifesto politico italiano, 1945-1977, Savelli, 1977.
Il Superuomo di massa: Studi sul romanzo popolare, Cooperativa Scrittori, 1976, revised edition, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1978.
(Coauthor) Informazione: Consenso e dissenso, Saggiatore, 1979.
(Coauthor) Strutture ed eventi dell'economia alessandrina: Cassa di risparmio di Alessandria: Umberto Eco, Carlo Beltrame, Francesco Forte, La Pietra, 1981.
Testa a testa, Images 70, 1981.
Sette anni di desiderio, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1983.
Conceito de texto, Queiroz, 1984.
(Coeditor) Cremonini: Opere dal 1960 al 1984, Grafis, 1984.
(Coauthor) Carnival!, Mouton Publishers (Hague, Netherlands), 1984.
L'Espresso, 1955/85, Editoriale L'Espresso, 1985.
La Rosa dipinta: Trentuno illustratori per "Il Nome della rosa," Azzurra, 1985.
Sugli specchi e altri saggi, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1985.
De bibliotheca, Echoppe, 1986.
Faith in Fakes: Essays, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1986.
(Coauthor) Le Ragioni della retorica: Atti del Convegno "Retorica, verita, opinione, persuasione": Cattolica, 22 febbrario-20 aprile 1985, Mucchi, 1986.
(Coauthor) Le Isole del tesoro: Proposte per la riscoperta e la gestione delle risorse culturali, Electa, 1988.
(Author of introduction) Maria Pia Pozzato and others, L'Idea deforme: Interpretazioni esoteriche di Dante, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1989.
Lo Strano caso della Hanau 1609, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1989.
(Coauthor) Leggere i promessi sposi: Analisi semiotiche, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1989.
I Limiti dell'interpretazione, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1990.
Stelle e stellette, Melangolo, 1991.
Vocali, Guida, 1991.
(Coauthor) Enrico Baj: Il Giardino delle delizie, Fabbri, 1991.
Semiotica: Storia, teoria, interpretazione: Saggi intorno a Umberto Eco, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1992.
(With Eugenio Carmi) Gli gnomi di gnu, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1992.
(Coeditor) Flaminio Gualdoni, La Ceramica di Arman, Edizioni Maggiore, 1994.
(Editor) Povero Pinocchio, Comix, 1995.
(Coauthor) Carmi, Edizioni L'Agrifoglio, 1996.
Incontro, Guernica Editions, 1997.
La Bustina di Minerva, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1999.
Contributor to books, including Momenti e problema di storia dell'estetica, Marzorati, 1959; Documenti su il nuovo medioevo, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1973; Convegno su realta e ideologie dell'informazione, 1978, Il Saggiatore, 1979; Carolina Invernizio, Matilde Serao, Liala, La Nuova Italia, 1979; and Perche continuiamo a fare e a insegnare arte?, Cappelli, 1979.
Eco's works have been translated into several languages, including Spanish and French.
in english translation
Il Problema estetico in San Tommaso, Edizioni di Filosofia, 1956, 2nd edition published as Il Problema estetico in Tommaso d'Aquino, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1970, translation by Hugh Bredin published as The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1988.
(Editor, with G. Zorzoli) Storia figurata delle invenzioni: Dalla selce scheggiata al volo spaziali, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1961, 2nd edition, 1968, translation by Anthony Lawrence published as The Picture History of Inventions from Plough to Polaris, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1963.
Opera aperta: Forma e indeterminazione nelle poetiche contemporanee (includes Le poetiche di Joyce; also see below), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1962, revised edition, 1972, translation by Anna Cancogni published as The Open Work, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1989.
Diario minimo, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1963, 2nd revised edition, 1976, translation by William Weaver published as Misreadings, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1993.
(Editor, with Oreste del Buono) Il Caso Bond, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1965, translation by R. Downie published as The Bond Affair, Macdonald (London, England), 1966.
I Tre cosmonauti (juvenile), illustrated by Eugenio Carmi, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1966, revised edition, 1988, translation published as The Three Astronauts, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1989.
La Bomba e il generale (juvenile), illustrated by Eugenio Carmi, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1966, revised edition, 1988, translation by William Weaver published as The Bomb and the General, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1989.
(Editor, with Jean Chesneaux and Gino Nebiolo) I Fumetti di Mao, Laterza, 1971, translation by Frances Frenaye published as The People's Comic Book: Red Women's Detachment, Hot on the Trail, and Other Chinese Comics, Anchor Press (New York, NY), 1973.
Trattato di semiotica generale, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1975, translation published as A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1976.
Lector in fabula: La Cooperazione interpretative nei testi narrativa, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1979, translation published as The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1979.
Il Nome della rosa (novel), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1980, translation by William Weaver published as The Name of the Rose, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1983.
Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio, G. Einaudi, 1984, translation published as Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1984.
Postscript to "The Name of the Rose" (originally published in Italian), translation by William Weaver, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1984.
Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (originally published in Italian), translation by Hugh Bredin, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1986.
Travels in Hyper Reality (originally published in Italian), edited by Helen Wolff and Kurt Wolff, translation by William Weaver, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1986.
Il Pendolo di Foucault (novel), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1988, translation by William Weaver published as Foucault's Pendulum, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1989.
The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce (originally published in Italian), translation by Ellen Esrock, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1989.
La Quete d'une langue parfaite dans l'histoire de la culture europeenne: Lecon inaugurale, faite le vendredi 2 octobre 1992, College de France, 1992, published in Italian as La Ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea, Laterza (Bari, Italy), 1993, translation by James Fentress published as The Search for the Perfect Language, Blackwell (Oxford, England), 1994.
How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays (originally published in Italian as Il Secondo diario minimo), translation by William Weaver, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1994.
L'Isola del giorno prima (novel), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1994, translation by William Weaver published as The Island of the Day Before, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1995.
Kant e l'ornitorinco, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1997, translation by Alastair McEwen published as Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition, Harcourt Brace (New York, NY), 2000.
Cinque scritti morali, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1997, translation by Alastair McEwen published as Five Moral Pieces, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2001.
Serendipities: Language and Lunacy, translation by William Weaver, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1998.
Baudolino, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 2000, translation by William Weaver, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.
Experiences in Translation, translation by Alastair McEwen, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Canada), 2001.
On Literature, translation by Martin McLaughlin, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2004.
in english
(Coauthor) Environmental Information: A Methodological Proposal, UNESCO, 1981.
(Editor, with Thomas A. Sebeok) Sign of the Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1984.
(Editor, with others) Meaning and Mental Representations, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1988.
(Editor, with Costantino Marmo) On the Medieval Theory of Signs, John Benjamins, 1989.
The Limits of Interpretation, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1990.
(With Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, and Christine Brooke-Rose) Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1992.
Misreadings, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1993.
Apocalypse Postponed: Essays, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1994.
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994.
(Author of text) Leonardo Cremonini: Paintings and Watercolors, 1976-1986, Claude Bernard Gallery, 1987.
The Cult of Vespa, Gingko Press, 1997.
(Coauthor) Conversations about the End of Time: Umberto Eco … [and others], produced and edited by Catherine David, Frederic Lenoir, and Jean-Philippe de Tonnac, Fromm International (New York, NY), 2000.
(With Carlo Maria Martini) Belief or Nonbelief?: A Confrontation, translation by Minna Proctor, Arcade (New York, NY), 2000.
Contributor to numerous encyclopedias, including Enciclopedia filosofica and Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Also contributor to proceedings of First Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Columnist for Il Giorno, La Stampa, Corriere della sera, and other newspapers and magazines. Contributor of essays and reviews to numerous periodicals, including Espresso, Corriere della sera, Times Literary Supplement, Revue internationale de sciences sociales, and Nouvelle revue française. Member of editorial board, Semiotica, Poetics Today, Degres, Structuralist Review, Text, Communication, Problemi dell'informazione, and Alfabeta; editor, VS-Semiotic Studies.
ADAPTATIONS: Jean-Jacques Annaud directed a 1986 film adaptation of Eco's novel The Name of the Rose, starring Sean Connery as William of Baskerville.
SIDELIGHTS: No one expected The Name of the Rose to become an internationally acclaimed best-seller, least of all its author, Umberto Eco. A respected Italian scholar, Eco has built his literary reputation on specialized academic writing about semiotics: the study of how cultures communicate through signs. Not only was The Name of the Rose Eco's first novel, it was also a complex creation, long on philosophy and short on sex—definitely not blockbuster material, especially not in Italy where the market for books is small.
Some experts attribute the novel's success to the rising interest in fantasy literature. "For all its historical accuracy, The Name of the Rose has the charm of an invented world," Drenka Willen, Eco's editor at Harcourt, told Newsweek. Others chalk it up to snob appeal. "Every year there is one great unread bestseller. A lot of people who will buy the book will never read it," Howard Kaminsky, president of Warner Books, suggested in that same Newsweek article.
But perhaps the most plausible explanation is the one offered by Franco Ferrucci in the New York Times Book Review: "The answer may lie in the fact that Mr. Eco is the unacknowledged leader of contemporary Italian culture, a man whose academic and ideological prestige has grown steadily through years of dazzling and solid work."
On one level The Name of the Rose is a murder mystery in which a number of Catholic monks are inexplicably killed. The setting is an ancient monastery in northern Italy, the year is 1327, and the air is rife with evil. Dissension among rival factions of the Franciscan order threatens to tear the church apart, and each side is preparing for a fight. On one side stand the Spiritualists and the emperor Louis IV who endorse evangelical poverty; on the other stand the corrupt Pope John XXII and the monks who believe that the vow of poverty will rob the church of earthly wealth and power. In an effort to avoid a confrontation, both sides agree to meet at the monastery—a Benedictine abbey that is considered neutral ground. To this meeting come William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan empowered to represent the emperor, and Adso, William's disciple and scribe. Before the council can convene, however, the body of a young monk is discovered at the bottom of a cliff, and William, a master logician in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, is recruited to solve the crime, assisted by Adso, in Watson's role.
Nowhere is the importance of decoding symbols more apparent than in the library—an intricate labyrinth that houses all types of books, including volumes on pagan rituals and black magic. The secret of the maze is known to only a few, among them the master librarian whose job it is to safeguard the collection and supervise the circulation of appropriate volumes. William suspects that the murder relates to a forbidden book—a rare work with "the power of a thousand scorpions"—that some of the more curious monks have been trying to obtain. "What the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks," William explains to Adso. "Why should they not have risked death to satisfy a curiosity of their minds, or have killed to prevent someone from appropriating a jealously guarded secret of their own?"
If William speaks for reason, Adso—the young novice who, in his old age, will relate the story—represents the voice of faith. Ferrucci believed that Adso reflects the author's second side: "The Eco who writes The Name of the Rose is Adso: a voice young and old at the same time, speaking from nostalgia for love and passion. William shapes the story with his insight; Adso gives it his own pathos. He will never think, as William does, that 'books are not made to be believed but to be subjected to inquiry'; Adso writes to be believed."
Another way The Name of the Rose can be interpreted is as a parable of modern life. The vehement struggle between church and state mirrors much of recent Italian history with its "debates over the role of the left and the accompanying explosion of terrorist violence," wrote Sari Gilbert in the Washington Post. Eco acknowledges the influence that former Italian premier Aldo Moro's 1978 kidnapping and death had on his story, telling Gilbert that it "gave us all a sense of impotence," but he also warned that the book was not simply a roman à clef. "Instead," he told Herbert Mitgang in a New York Times Book Review article, "I hope readers see the roots, that everything that existed then—from banks and the inflationary spiral to the burning of libraries—exists today. We are always approaching the time of the anti-Christ. In the nuclear age, we are never far from the Dark Ages."
As with his first novel, Eco's second novel was an international best-seller. Published in 1989 in English as Foucault's Pendulum, the book is similar to The Name of the Rose in that it is a semiotic murder mystery wrapped in several layers of meaning. The plot revolves around Casaubon, the narrator, and two Milan editors who break up the monotony of reviewing manuscripts on the occult by combining information from all of them into one computer program called the Plan. Initially conceived as a joke, the Plan connects the Knights Templar—a medieval papal order that fought in the Crusades—with other occult groups throughout history. The program produces a map indicating the geographical point at which the powers of the earth can be controlled. That point is in Paris, France, at Foucault's Pendulum. When occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth. Beyond the basic plot, readers will also encounter William Shakespeare, Rene Descartes, Tom and Jerry, Karl Marx, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, Sam Spade, and Frederick the Great of Prussia, as well as assorted Nazis, Rosicrucians, and Jesuits. Eco orchestrates all of these and other diverse characters and groups into his multilayered semiotic story.
Some of the interpretations of Foucault's Pendulum critics have suggested include reading it as nothing more than an elaborate joke, as an exploration of the ambiguity between text as reality and reality as text, and as a warning that harm comes to those who seek knowledge through bad logic and faulty reasoning. Given this range of interpretation and Eco's interest in semiotics, Foucault's Pendulum is probably best described as a book about many things, including the act of interpretation itself.
Foucault's Pendulum generated a broad range of commentary. Some critics faulted it for digressing too often into scholarly minutia, and others felt Eco had only mixed success in relating the different levels of his tale. Several reviewers, however, praised Foucault's Pendulum. Comparing the work to his first novel, Herbert Mitgang, for example, said in the New York Times that the book "is a quest novel that is deeper and richer than The Name of the Rose. It's a brilliant piece of research and writing—experimental and funny, literary and philosophical—that bravely ignores the conventional expectations of the reader." Eco offered his own opinion of his novel in Time: "This was a book conceived to irritate the reader. I knew it would provoke ambiguous, nonhomogeneous responses because it was a book conceived to point up some contradictions."
Eco's third novel, The Island of the Day Before, like The Search for the Perfect Language, explained Toronto Globe and Mail contributor Patrick Rengger, "is also, and in more ways than one, attempting to excavate truths by sifting language and meaning." The book takes place during the early seventeenth century and tells the story of an Italian castaway, Roberto della Griva, who is marooned on an otherwise deserted ship in the South Pacific. "While exploring the ship," stated Mel Gussow in the New York Times, "the protagonist drifts back into his past and recalls old battles as well as old figments of his imagination." The Island of the Day Before "is dazzling in its range," Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Marina Warner declared, "its linguistic fireworks ('Babelizing' as Eco calls it) and sheer learning."
In Baudolino Eco draws readers back into the early thirteenth century to tell the life story of a man involved in most major events of the period, including the search for the Holy Grail and the fourth Crusade. An admitted liar, Baudolino tells his story to Byzantine scribe Niketas Choniates, a member of the court of Frederick Barbarossa, while all around the two men the city of Constantinople is undergoing destruction. "The implicit contrast between the refined civilization of Byzantium and the barbarity of the Crusaders who willfully put it to the torch is as forceful now as ever," noted Ingrid D. Rowland in a review for the New Republic; "the destruction of Constantinople in Baudolino, like the destruction of the library in The Name of the Rose, threatens to slay civility itself." Noting that the novel leaves the reader puzzling over what is fact and what is fiction—Niketas Choniates was an actual person, whereas Baudolino is not—Seattle Times contributor Terry Tazioli wrote that the novel "becomes so fun, so fanciful and so intricate that Eco must be chuckling all the way to the corner trattoria, simply anticipating his readers' befuddlement and fun." Calling Baudolino both "beguiling and exasperating," Time reviewer Richard Lacayo maintained that through his novel Eco once again illustrates that "the thing we call knowledge—of ourselves, one another, the world at large—… [is] mostly a matter of which illusions we choose to believe."
Apart from his novels, Eco has been a prolific contributor to Italian letters, and many of his works have been translated into English. The Search for the Perfect Language is a history of the attempts to reconstruct a "natural" original language. London Review of Books contributor John Sturrock called it "a brisk, chronological account of the many thinkers about language, from antiquity onwards, who have conceived programmes for undoing the effects of time and either recovering the ur-language that they believed must once have existed only later to be lost, or else inventing a replacement for it." Eco pursues this search as a semiotician, because he believes language is the most common human symbol. However, as The Search for the Perfect Language reveals, more often than not the thinkers only reveal their own linguistic prejudices in their conclusions. This search for the primal tongue is, Sturrock continued, a "history of a doomed but often laudably ingenious movement to go against the linguistic grain and rediscover a truly natural language: a language of Nature or of God as it were, the appropriateness of whose signs there could be no denying."
Eco's Apocalypse Postponed is a collection of essays on culture written between the 1960s and the 1980s. The book discusses a variety of topics, including cartoons, literacy, Federico Fellini, and the counterculture movement, and reflects the alarm of many intellectuals at the proliferation of pop culture during the period. Divided into four parts, which reflect the topics of mass culture, mass media, countercultures, and Italian intellectualism, the book was summarized by a Kirkus reviewer as "substantial, lucid, humane, and a great deal of fun." Serendipities: Language and Lunacy is, as Tom Holland reported in the New Statesman, "really nothing more than a collection of footnotes to an earlier and much more detailed work," The Search for the Perfect Language. In Booklist, Michael Spinella wrote, "This slim but pithy volume offers an approachable introduction to the intellectual history of language and the foundation of linguistic study."
In Kant and the Platypus Eco considers questions of meaning: how do we identify and classify something that is totally new to us? The book revisits and revises ideas of semiotics that Eco previously discussed in A Theory of Semiotics and Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. According to Simon Blackburn in the New Republic, Eco said, "This is a hard-core book. It's not a page-turner. You have to stay on every page for two weeks with your pencil. In other words, don't buy it if you are not Einstein." However, in World Literature Today, Rocco Capozzi commented that the author has "an outstanding talent for teaching and entertaining at the same time, even as he examines complicated theoretical, philosophical, linguistic, and cultural issues." And in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer called Kant and the Platypus "valuable and pleasurable for anyone seeking a gallant introduction to the philosophy of language." In Five Moral Pieces, Eco presents five essays on ethical principles in postmodern culture. The essays originated as lectures and were each prompted by a social crisis—such as the Gulf War, the trial of a Nazi criminal, or the rise of extreme conservatives in Europe—or by an invitation for Eco to contribute his thoughts on a topic. In Library Journal, Ulrich Baer wrote that the collection "cogently argues and periodically sparkles with … wit and insight."
Eco, who directs programs for communication sciences and publishing at the University of Bologna, frequently travels to the United States and elsewhere to speak and teach. He continues to produce scholarly treatises, contributes to several Italian and foreign newspapers, and edits a weekly column for the magazine L'Espresso.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
books
Bondanella, Peter E., Umberto Eco and the Open Text: Semiotics, Fiction, Popular Culture, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.
Capozzi, Rocco, editor, Reading Eco: An Anthology, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1997.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 28, 1984, Volume 60, 1991.
Inge, Thomas M., editor, Naming the Rose: Essays on Eco's "The Name of the Rose," University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1988.
Santoro-Brienza, Liberato, editor, Talking of Joyce: Umberto Eco, Liberato Santoro-Brienza, University College Dublin Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1998.
Tanner, William E., Anne Gervasi, and Kay Mizell, editors, Out of Chaos: Semiotics; A Festschrift in Honor of Umberto Eco, Liberal Arts Press (Arlington, TX), 1991.
periodicals
America, August 3, 1983.
American Historical Review, June, 1997, p. 776.
American Scholar, autumn, 1987.
Antioch Review, winter, 1993, p. 149.
Atlantic, November, 1989; November, 1998, p. 138.
Bloomsbury Review, September, 1992.
Booklist, April 15, 1998, p. 1369; February 15, 1997, p. 1038; October 15, 1998, p. 377; April 1, 2000, p. 1414; April 15, 2000, p. 1502; September 1, 2001, p. 43; March 15, 2003, Ted Hipple, review of Baudolino, p. 1338.
Books, autumn, 1999, p. 18.
Books in Canada, December, 2002, David Solway, review of Baudolino, p. 10.
Boston Book Review, July, 1999, p. 32; December, 1999, p. 33.
Boston Globe, March 30, 1994, p. 75.
Choice, December, 2000, p. 720; September, 2001, p. 108.
Corriere della sera, June 1, 1981.
Critique, spring, 2001, p. 271; summer, 2003, Thomas J. Rice, "Mapping Complexity in the Fiction of Umberto Eco," pp. 349-369.
Daily Telegraph (London, England), December 18, 1999, p. 3.
Drama Review, summer, 1993.
Economist, October 28, 1989.
Emergency Librarian, May, 1997, p. 9.
Esquire, August, 1994, p. 99.
Globe and Mail, (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), January 6, 1996, p. C7.
Guardian, March 24, 1998; December 18, 1999, p. 1.
Harper's, August, 1983; May, 1993, p. 24; January, 1995, p. 33.
International Philosophical Quarterly, June, 1980.
Interview, November, 1989.
Journal of Communication, autumn, 1976.
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online
The Modern Word, http://www.themodernword.com/ (January 18, 2002), "Umberto Eco."*