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| Eco employs his education as a medievalist to good advantage in his novel ], which was made into a movie staring Sean Connery as a monk who investigates a series of murders revolving around a monastery library. He is particularly good at translating medieval religious controversies and heresies into modern political and economic terms so that the reader can understand them without being a theologian. | Eco employs his education as a medievalist to good advantage in his novel ], which was made into a movie staring Sean Connery as a monk who investigates a series of murders revolving around a monastery library. He is particularly good at translating medieval religious controversies and heresies into modern political and economic terms so that the reader can understand them without being a theologian. | ||
| Like that other professor of medieval studies turned literary author, Argentinian writer ], Eco writes novels of labyrinthine complexity. A good example is ], which does for conspiracy theories and occultism what ] did for medieval religous struggles. | Like that other professor of medieval studies turned literary author, Argentinian writer ], Eco writes novels of labyrinthine complexity. A good example is ], which does for conspiracy theories and occultism what ] did for medieval religous struggles, namely intricately weave them into a mystery novel. | ||
| Eco's work illustrates the post-modernist concept of ], or the inter-connectedness of all literary works and their interpretation, which began as a avante guard literary theory and was turned into a new medium of communication by the invention of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)and the World Wide Web by Berners-Lee, a scientist working at the CERNE cyclotron outside Geneva, Switzerland. | Eco's work illustrates the post-modernist concept of ], or the inter-connectedness of all literary works and their interpretation, which began as a avante guard literary theory and was turned into a new medium of communication by the invention of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)and the World Wide Web by Berners-Lee, a scientist working at the CERNE cyclotron outside Geneva, Switzerland. | ||
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| An old prof of your author, ], was attempting a translation of] into French when last I left him, an ambitious project, indeed, seeing as the novel is not written in an known or extant language, not even Irish English. | An old prof of your author, ], was attempting a translation of] into French when last I left him, an ambitious project, indeed, seeing as the novel is not written in an known or extant language, not even Irish English. | ||
| And if the last four paragraphs or so have confused or infuriated you, then you probably will not want to read the |
And if the last four paragraphs or so have confused or infuriated you, then you probably will not want to read the novels or essays of Umberto Eco, although his major novels can be enjoyed as mystery novels if you are willing to give the dense thickets of scholarship sufficient attention to be able to understand how the plot depends on what Eco knows and you (and the hero of the novel) don't. | ||
| == Bibliography == | == Bibliography == | ||
Revision as of 21:42, 24 July 2003
Umberto Eco (born January 5, 1932) is an Italian novelist and philosopher, best known for his novels and essays.
Eco was born in Alessandria, in the Italian province of Piedmont. He is an author and semiotician. He works as a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna.
Eco employs his education as a medievalist to good advantage in his novel The Name of the Rose, which was made into a movie staring Sean Connery as a monk who investigates a series of murders revolving around a monastery library. He is particularly good at translating medieval religious controversies and heresies into modern political and economic terms so that the reader can understand them without being a theologian.
Like that other professor of medieval studies turned literary author, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, Eco writes novels of labyrinthine complexity. A good example is Foucault's Pendulum, which does for conspiracy theories and occultism what The Name of the Rose did for medieval religous struggles, namely intricately weave them into a mystery novel.
Eco's work illustrates the post-modernist concept of hypertextuality, or the inter-connectedness of all literary works and their interpretation, which began as a avante guard literary theory and was turned into a new medium of communication by the invention of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)and the World Wide Web by Berners-Lee, a scientist working at the CERNE cyclotron outside Geneva, Switzerland.
And so by, "River run, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs", you, dear reader, are brought from the subject of Humberto Eco's scholarly fiction through the WWW back to Misplaced Pages, which illustrates what hypertextuality is all about, not to mention collective authorship by readers and writers.
The quotation, of course, is from James Joyce's magnificently obscure and hypertextual novel, Finnegans Wake (note the absence of the apostrophe), which also gave Quantum Mechanics the name for quarks--"a quark for Master Mark". Quark is German for a kind of runny green cheese and also the word for "nonsense".
An old prof of your author, Michel Butor, was attempting a translation ofFinnegans Wake into French when last I left him, an ambitious project, indeed, seeing as the novel is not written in an known or extant language, not even Irish English.
And if the last four paragraphs or so have confused or infuriated you, then you probably will not want to read the novels or essays of Umberto Eco, although his major novels can be enjoyed as mystery novels if you are willing to give the dense thickets of scholarship sufficient attention to be able to understand how the plot depends on what Eco knows and you (and the hero of the novel) don't.
Bibliography
Novels
- "The Name of the Rose" (Il nome della rosa) (1980) -- A philosophical detective novel in a medieval setting;
- See also "Postscript to 'The Name of the Rose'" for background to the novel.
- A film of this book was made starring Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Ron Perlman, F. Murray Abraham and Michael Lonsdale.
- "Foucault's Pendulum" (Il pendolo di Foucault) (1989) -- A present day conspiracy theory novel;
- "The Island of the Day Before" (L'isola del giorno prima) (1995) -- A novel about a XVII century nobleman marooned across the international date line;
- "Baudolino" (Baudolino) (2001) -- A novel about a young peasant adopted by emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, and his adventures;
Books on philosophy, semiotics, linguistics, aesthetics
(NOTE: For some of these books he is co-author)
- "Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language"
- "The Limits of Interpretation (Advances in Semiotics)"
- "The Role of the Reader : Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts"
- "Interpretation and Overinterpretation"
- "Kant and the Platypus : Essays on Language and Cognition"
- "Serendipities : Language and Lunacy"
- "The Search for the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe)"
- "Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages"
- "The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas"
- "Belief or Nonbelief? : A Dialogue"
Books of his essays
- "Misreadings"
- "Travels in Hyperreality : Essays"
- "How to Travel With a Salmon & Other Essays"
Books for children
(art by Eugenio Carmi)
- "The Bomb and the General"
- "The Three Astronauts"
Other
: ("log" is greek for "logos" = knowledge) ; scandinavian expression for an expert in the field of James Bond
Further, Umberto Eco is an expert on the subject of 007, which adds him to the worldwide group of "bondologs".
James Bond related writings:
- Il Caso Bond (aka The Bond Affair ) 1966
- by Del Buono and Umberto Eco
- A collection of essays edited by Umberto Eco.
- Umberto Eco:
- "The Narrative Structure in Fleming" in his The Bond Affair (1966) reprinted in Bernard Waitesr, Tony Bennett and Graham Martin ed. Popular Culture: Past and Present (London: Croom Helm, 1982).