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WIKIMAG n. 10 - Settembre 2013
Umberto Eco
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Umberto Eco
OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [umˈbɛrto
ˈɛko]; born 5 January 1932) is an Italian
semiotician,
essayist,
philosopher, literary critic, and
novelist. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 novel Il
nome della rosa (The
Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining
semiotics in fiction,
biblical
analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He has since written
further novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's
Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The
Island of the Day Before). His most recent novel Il cimitero
di Praga (The
Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, was a best-seller.
Eco has also written academic texts, children's books and many
essays. He is founder of the Dipartimento di Comunicazione at the
University of the Republic of San Marino, President of the Scuola
Superiore di Studi Umanistici,
University of Bologna, member of the
Accademia dei Lincei (since November 2010) and an Honorary Fellow of
Kellogg College,
University of Oxford.
Biography
Eco was born in the city of
Alessandria in the region of
Piedmont in northern Italy. His father, Giulio, was an accountant
before the government called upon him to serve in three wars. During
World War II, Umberto and his mother, Giovanna, moved to a small village
in the Piedmontese mountainside. Eco received a
Salesian education, and he has made references to the order and its
founder in his works and interviews.[1]
His family name is supposedly an acronym of ex caelis oblatus
(from Latin: a gift from the heavens), which was given to his
grandfather (a foundling) by a city official.[2]
His father was the son of a family with thirteen children, and urged
Umberto to become a lawyer, but he entered the
University of Turin in order to take up medieval philosophy and
literature, writing his thesis on
Thomas Aquinas and earning his
Laurea
in philosophy in 1954. During his university studies, Eco stopped
believing in God and left the
Roman Catholic Church.[3][4]
After this, Eco worked as a cultural editor for the state broadcasting
station
Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) and also lectured at the University
of Turin (1956–1964). A group of
avant-garde artists, painters, musicians, writers, whom he had
befriended at RAI (Gruppo 63), became an important and influential
component in Eco's future writing career. This was especially true after
the publication of his first book in 1956, Il problema estetico in
San Tommaso, which was an extension of his doctoral thesis. This
also marked the beginning of his lecturing career at his
alma mater.
In September 1962, he married Renate Ramge, a
German
art teacher with whom he has a son and a daughter. He divides his time
between an apartment in
Milan and
a vacation house near
Urbino.
He has a 30,000 volume
library
in the former and a 20,000 volume library in the latter.[5]
In 1992–1993 Eco was the Norton professor at
Harvard University. On May 8, 1993, Eco received an honorary Doctor
of Humane Letters from Indiana University at Bloomington in recognition
of his over 15 year association with the university's Research Center
for Language and Semiotic Studies. Six books that were authored,
coauthored, or coedited by Eco were published by the Indiana University
Press. Additionally, he frequently collaborated with his friend, Dr.
Thomas A. Sebeok, noted semiotician and Distinguished Professor of
Linguistics at IU. On May 23, 2002, Eco received an honorary Doctor of
Letters from
Rutgers University in
New Brunswick,
New
Jersey. In 2009, the
University of Belgrade (Serbia)
awarded him an honorary doctorate.[6]
Eco is a member of the Italian skeptic organization
CICAP.[7]
Professional and academic activity
Studies on medieval aesthetics
In 1959, he published his second book, Sviluppo dell'estetica
medievale (The Development of Medieval Aesthetics), which
established Eco as a formidable thinker in
medieval philosophy and proved his literary worth to his father.[citation
needed] After 18 months' military service in the
Italian Army, he left RAI in 1959 to become the senior non-fiction
editor of the
Bompiani publishing house in
Milan, a
position he occupied until 1975. Eco's work on medieval aesthetics
stressed the distinction between theory and practice.[citation
needed] About the Middle Ages, he wrote that there
was "a geometrically rational schema of what beauty ought to be, and on
the other [hand] the unmediated life of art with its dialectic of forms
and intentions", the two cut off from one another as if by a pane of
glass. Eco's work in literary theory has changed focus over time.
Initially, he was one of the pioneers of "Reader
Response".[citation
needed]
Literary criticism
Eco began seriously developing his ideas on the "open" text and on
semiotics, writing many essays on these subjects, and in 1962 he
published Opera aperta (translated into English as "The Open
Work"). In it, Eco argued that literary texts are fields of meaning,
rather than strings of meaning, that they are understood as open,
internally dynamic and psychologically engaged fields. Literature which
limits one's potential understanding to a single, unequivocal line, the
closed text, remains the least rewarding, while texts that are
the most active between mind and society and life (open
texts) are the liveliest and best—although valuation terminology is
not his primary area of focus. Eco emphasizes the fact that words do not
have meanings that are simply lexical, but rather, they operate in the
context of utterance.[citation
needed]
I. A. Richards and others said as much, but Eco draws out the
implications for literature from this idea.[citation
needed] He also extended the axis of meaning from
the continually deferred meanings of words in an utterance to a play
between expectation and fulfilment of meaning.[citation
needed] Eco comes to these positions through study
of language and from semiotics, rather than from psychology or
historical analysis (as did theorists such as
Wolfgang Iser, on the one hand, and
Hans-Robert Jauss, on the other).
Studies on
media culture
From the late '50s till the late '60s, before his semiotic turn, Eco
engaged in studies on mass media and
media culture, which were published in various newspapers and
journals.[8][page needed]
According to some[who?]
these studies were influential although he did not develop a full-scale
theory in this field.[citation
needed]
His short 1961 essay
Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno (Phenomenology of Mike
Bongiorno, on the most popular
quiz show host,
Mike Bongiorno), received much notoriety among the general public,
and has drawn endless questions by journalists in every public
appearance by Eco; it was later included in the collection Diario
minimo (1963). His book Apocalittici e integrati (1964)
analyzes the phenomenon of mass communication from a sociological
perspective.
In 1967 he gave the influential lecture Towards a Semiological
Guerrilla Warfare,[9]
which coined the influential term "semiological
guerrilla," and influenced the theorization of guerrilla tactics
against
mainstream
mass media culture, such as
guerrilla television and
culture jamming.[citation
needed] Among the expressions used in the essay,
are "communications guerrilla warfare" and "cultural guerrilla."[10][11]
The essay was later included in Eco's book
Faith in Fakes.
Semiotics
Eco founded and developed one of the most important approaches in
contemporary semiotics, usually referred to as interpretative semiotics.
The main books in which he elaborates his theory are La struttura
assente (literally: The Absent Structure), A Theory of
Semiotics (1975), The Role of the Reader (1979), Semiotics
and Philosophy of Language (1984), The Limits of Interpretation
(1990) and Kant and the Platypus (1997).
Eco co-founded
Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici (known as VS among
Italian academics), an influential semiotic journal. VS has become an
important publication platform for many scholars whose work is related
to signs and signification. The journal's foundation and activities have
contributed to the growing influence of semiotics as an academic field
in its own right, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. Most of the
well-known European semioticians, among them Eco,
A.J. Greimas,
Jean-Marie Floch,
Jacques Fontanille, have published original articles in VS,
as well as philosophers and linguists like
John Searle and
George Lakoff.
Anthropology
In 1988, at the University of Bologna, Eco created an unusual program
called Anthropology of the West from the perspective of
non-Westerners (African and Chinese scholars), as defined by their own
criteria. Eco developed this transcultural international network based
on the idea of
Alain le Pichon in West Africa. The Bologna program resulted in a
first conference in Guangzhou, China, in 1991 entitled "Frontiers of
Knowledge." The first event was soon followed by an Itinerant
Euro-Chinese seminar on "Misunderstandings in the Quest for the
Universal" along the silk trade route from
Canton[disambiguation
needed] to Beijing. The latter culminated in a book
entitled The Unicorn and the Dragon, which discussed the question
of the creation of knowledge in China and in Europe. Scholars
contributing to this volume were from China, including
Tang Yijie,
Wang
Bin and
Yue Dayun, as well as from Europe:
Furio Colombo,
Antoine Danchin,
Jacques Le Goff,
Paolo Fabbri,
Alain
Rey.[12]
In 2000 a seminar in
Timbuktu (Mali), was followed by another gathering in Bologna to
reflect on the conditions of reciprocal knowledge between East and West.
This in turn gave rise to a series of conferences in Brussels, Paris,
and Goa, culminating in Beijing in 2007. The topics of the Beijing
conference were "Order and Disorder","New Concepts of War and Peace",
"Human Rights" and "Social Justice and Harmony". Eco presented the
opening lecture. The following anthropologists gave presentations: from
India (Balveer
Arora,
Varun Sahni,
Rukmini Bhaya Nair); from Africa (Moussa
Sow); from Europe (Roland
Marti,
Maurice Olender); from Korea (Cha
Insuk); from China (Huang
Ping,
Zhao Tinyang). Also on the program were scholars from the domains of
law or science:
Antoine Danchin,
Ahmed Djebbar,
Dieter Grimm.[13]
Eco's interest in East/West dialogue to facilitate international
communication and understanding also correlates with his related
interest in the international auxiliary language
Esperanto.
Style and works
Themes
Eco's fiction has enjoyed a wide audience around the world, with many
translations. His novels are full of subtle, often multilingual,
references to literature and history and his dense, intricate plots tend
to take dizzying turns. Eco's work illustrates the concept of
intertextuality, or the inter-connectedness of all literary works.
Eco cites
James Joyce and
Jorge Luis Borges as the two modern authors who have influenced his
work the most.[14]
Selected
narrative works
Eco employed his education as a medievalist in his first novel
The Name of the Rose (1980), a historical mystery set in a
14th-century monastery. Franciscan friar
William of Baskerville, aided by his assistant Adso, a Benedictine
novice, investigates a series of murders at a monastery that is to host
an important religious debate. The novel contains many direct or
indirect
metatextual references to other sources, requiring the detective
work of the reader to 'solve'. The title is unexplained in the book. As
a symbol, the rose is ubiquitous enough to not confer any single
meaning.[15]
There is a tribute to
Jorge Luis Borges, a major influence on Eco, in the blind monk and
librarian Jorge of Burgos: Borges, like Jorge, lived a celibate life
consecrated to his passion for books, and also went blind in later life.
William of Baskerville is a logically-minded Englishman who is a
monk and a detective, and his name evokes both
William of Ockham and
Sherlock Holmes (by way of
The Hound of the Baskervilles). Several passages describing him
are strongly reminiscent of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's description of
Sherlock Holmes.[16][17]
The underlying mystery of the murder is borrowed from the "Arabian
Nights". The Name of the Rose was later made into
a motion picture starring
Sean Connery,
F. Murray Abraham,
Christian Slater and
Ron Perlman which employs the plot but not the philosophical and
historical themes from the novel.
In
Foucault's Pendulum (1988), three under-employed editors who
work for a minor publishing house decide to amuse themselves by
inventing a conspiracy theory. Their conspiracy, which they call "The
Plan", is about an immense and intricate plot to take over the world by
a secret order descended from the
Knights Templar. As the game goes on, the three slowly become
obsessed with the details of this plan. The game turns dangerous when
outsiders learn of The Plan, and believe that the men have really
discovered the secret to regaining the lost treasure of the Templars.
The Island of the Day Before (1994) was Eco's third novel. The
book, set in the seventeenth century, is about a man
marooned on a ship within sight of an island which he believes is on
the other side of the international date-line. The main character is
trapped by his inability to swim and instead spends the bulk of the book
reminiscing on his life and the adventures that brought him to be
marooned.
Baudolino was published in 2000. Baudolino is a knight who saves
the Byzantine historian
Niketas Choniates during the sack of Constantinople in the
Fourth Crusade. Claiming to be an accomplished liar, he confides his
history, from his childhood as a peasant lad endowed with a vivid
imagination, through his role as adopted son of
Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, to his mission to visit the mythical
realm of
Prester John. Throughout his retelling, Baudolino brags of his
ability to swindle and tell tall tales, leaving the historian (and the
reader) unsure of just how much of his story was a lie.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2005) is about Giambattista
Bodoni, an old bookseller specializing in antiques who emerges from a
coma with only some memories to recover his past.
The Prague Cemetery, Eco's 6th novel, was published in 2010. It
is the story of a secret agent who "weaves plots, conspiracies,
intrigues and attacks, and helps determine the historical and political
fate of the European Continent." The book is a narrative of the rise of
Modern-day
antisemitism, by way of the
Dreyfus Affair,
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other important 19th century
events which gave rise to hatred and hostility toward the
Jewish people.
Selected
bibliography
Novels
Non-fiction
books
- La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea,
1993(en)
- Il problema estetico in San Tommaso (1956 – English
translation: The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 1988,
revised)
- "Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale", in Momenti e problemi
di storia dell'estetica (1959 –
Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 1985)
- Opera aperta (1962, rev. 1976 – English translation:
The Open Work (1989)
- Diario Minimo (1963 – English translation:
Misreadings, 1993)
- Apocalittici e integrati (1964 – Partial English
translation: Apocalypse Postponed, 1994)
- Le poetiche di Joyce (1965 – English translations:
The Middle Ages of James Joyce, The Aesthetics of
Chaosmos, 1989)
- La Struttura Assente (1968 – The Absent Structure)
- Il costume di casa (1973 – English translation:
Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, 1986)
- Trattato di semiotica generale (1975 – English
translation: A Theory of Semiotics, 1976)
- Il Superuomo di massa (1976)
- Dalla periferia dell'impero (1977)
- Lector in fabula (1979)
- The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of
Texts (1979 – English edition containing essays from
Opera aperta, Apocalittici e integrati, Forme del
contenuto (1971), Il Superuomo di massa, Lector in
Fabula).
- Sette anni di desiderio (1983)
- Postille al nome della rosa (1983 – English
translation: Postscript to The Name of the Rose, 1984)
- Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio (1984 – English
translation: Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language,
1984)
- De Bibliotheca (1986 – in Italian and French)
- I limiti dell'interpretazione (1990 – The Limits
of Interpretation, 1990)
- Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992 – with R.
Rorty, J. Culler, C. Brooke-Rose; edited by S. Collini)
- La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea
(1993 – English translation:
The Search for the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe),
1995)
-
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994)
- Incontro – Encounter – Rencontre (1996 – in Italian,
English, French)
- In cosa crede chi non crede? (with
Carlo Maria Martini), 1996 – English translation:
Belief or Nonbelief?: A Dialogue, 2000)
- Cinque scritti morali (1997 – English translation:
Five Moral Pieces, 2001)
- Kant e l'ornitorinco (1997 – English translation:
Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition,
1999)
-
Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (1998)
- How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (1998 –
Partial English translation of Il secondo diario minimo,
1994)
- La bustina di Minerva (1999)
- Experiences in Translation,
University of Toronto Press (2000)
- Sulla letteratura, (2003 – English translation by
Martin McLaughlin: On Literature, 2004)
- Mouse or Rat?: Translation as negotiation (2003)
- Storia della bellezza (2004, co-edited with Girolamo
de Michele – English translation: History of Beauty/On
Beauty, 2004)
- A passo di gambero. Guerre calde e populismo mediatico
(Bompiani, 2006 – English translation: Turning Back the
Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism, 2007, Alastair McEwen)
- Storia della bruttezza (Bompiani, 2007 – English
translation: On Ugliness, 2007)
- Dall'albero al labirinto: studi storici sul segno e
l'interpretazione (Bompiani, 2007)
- La Vertigine della Lista (Rizzoli, 2009) - English
translation:
The Infinity of Lists
- Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali
(Bompiani, 2011) - English translation by Richard Dixon:
Inventing the Enemy, 2012)
Anthologies
-
Eco, Umberto;
Sebeok, Thomas A., eds. (1984), The Sign of Three: Dupin,
Holmes, Peirce, Bloomington, IN: History Workshop,
Indiana University Press,
ISBN 978-0-253-35235-4
Ten essays on methods of
abductive inference in
Poe's
Dupin,
Doyle's
Holmes,
Peirce and many others, 236 pages..
Books for
children
(Art by Eugenio Carmi)
- La bomba e il generale (1966, Rev. 1988 – English
translation: The Bomb and the General Harcourt Children's
Books (J); 1st edition (February 1989)
ISBN 978-0152097004)
- I tre cosmonauti (1966 – English translation: The
Three Astronauts Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd; First edition
(April 3, 1989)
ISBN 978-0436140945)
- Gli gnomi di Gnu (1992 – English translation: The
Gnomes of Gnu Bompiani; 1. ed edition (1992)
ISBN 978-8845218859)
References
-
^
"Don Bosco in Umberto Eco's latest book", N7: News
publication for the Salesian community, June 2004: 4.[dead
link]
-
^
A Short Biography of Umberto Eco, The modern world,
retrieved 22 March 2004.
-
^
"A Resounding Eco", Time, June 13, 2005, "His new
book touches on politics, but also on faith. Raised Catholic,
Eco has long since left the church. ‘Even though I'm still in
love with that world, I stopped believing in God in my 20s after
my doctoral studies on St. Thomas Aquinas. You could say he
miraculously cured me of my faith,…’"
-
^
Liukkonen,
Petri (2003),
Umberto Eco (1932–) – Pseudonym: Dedalus,
FI: Kirjasto Sci-fi.
-
^
Farndale, Nigel (2005-05-24).
"Heavyweight champion".
The Daily Telegraph.
Retrieved 2009-10-23.
-
^
"Honorary Doctors". Serbia: University of Belgrade.
Retrieved 2012-06-11.[dead
link]
-
^
McMahon, Barbara (October 6, 2005).
"No blood, sweat or tears".
The Guardian.
Retrieved July 28, 2009.
-
^
Capozzi (2008).
-
^
Strangelove
(2005), pp. 104–5, "oft-quoted article"
.
-
^ Eco (1967)
-
^ Bondanella (2005)
pp. 53, 88–9.
-
^
Coppock, Patrick
(February 1995),
A Conversation on Information (interview), Denver: UC.
-
^
Vegetal and mineral memory, EG: Ahgram, November 2003.
Considers, among other things,
encyclopedias.
-
^
Eco (2006) On Literature
Vintage
-
^
Eco,
Umberto; Translator: W. Weaver. (1985). Reflections on The
Name of the Rose (in English, translated from Italian.).
London: Martin Secker & Warburg Limited.
-
^
Eco,
Umberto (1986). The Name of the Rose. New York: Warner
Books. p. 10.
ISBN 0-446-34410-9.
-
^
Doyle,
Arthur Conan (2003). Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and
Stories Vol 1. New York: Bantam Books. p. 11.
ISBN 0-553-21241-9.
External links
[hide]
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Novels |
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Manual |
- Come si fa una tesi di laurea
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Books for children |
- The Bomb and the General
- The Three Astronauts
- The Gnomes of Gnu
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[show]
Awards received by Umberto Eco
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