Umberto Eco

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 in his novel The Name of the Rose, which was made into a movie starring 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.

Although his novels often include references to arcane historical figures and texts and his dense, intricate plots tend to take dizzying turns he has enjoyed a wide audience around the world, with good sales and many translations. Foucault's Pendulum (book), Eco's second novel, (the thinking man's Da Vinci Code) also sold well.

Eco's work illustrates the post-modernist literary theory concept of hypertextuality, or the inter-connectedness of all literary works and their interpretation.

Table of contents

1 Bibliography

1.1 Novels
1.2 Books on philosophy, semiotics, linguistics, aesthetics, morality
1.3 Books for children
1.4 Other

2 External links

Bibliography

Novels

"The Name of the Rose" (1983) (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" (1989) (Il pendolo di Foucault, 1988) -- A present day conspiracy theory novel (see also Abulafia);
"The Island of the Day Before" (1995) (L'isola del giorno prima, (1994) -- A novel about a 17th century nobleman marooned across the international date line;
"Baudolino" (2002) (Baudolino, 2000) -- A novel about a young peasant adopted by emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, and his adventures;

Books on philosophy, semiotics, linguistics, aesthetics, morality

"The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas" (1988, Revised) (Il problema estetico in San Tommaso, 1956)
"Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages" (1985) ("Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale" in "Momenti e problemi di storia dell'estetica", 1959)
"The Open Work" (1989) (from the 1976 edition of Opera Aperta, 1962, with other essays added).
"Misreadings" (1993) (Diario minimo,1963)
"Apocalypse Postponed" (1994) (Apocalittici e integrati, 1964; partial translation, with other texts added)
"The Middle Ages of James Joyce" (AKA The Aesthetics of Chaosmos) (1989) (Le poetiche di Joyce, 1965)
"Travels in Hyperreality" (AKA Faith in Fakes) (1986) (Il costume di casa, 1973, Dalla periferia dell'impero, 1977, Sette anni di desiderio, 1983)
"A Theory of Semiotics" (1976) (Original english version of Trattato di semiotica generale, 1975)
"The Role of the Reader : Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts" (1979) (Containing essays from Opera aperta (1962) , Apocalittici e integrati (1964), Forme del contenuto (1971), Il Superuomo di massa (1976), Lector in Fabula (1979)).
"Postscript to The Name of the Rose" (1984) (Postille al nome della rosa 1983)
"Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language" (1984) (Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio, 1984)
"The Limits of Interpretation (Advances in Semiotics)" (1990) (I limiti dell'interpretazione, 1990)
"How to Travel With a Salmon & Other Essays" (1998) (Partial translation of Il secondo diario minimo, 1994)
"Interpretation and Overinterpretation" (1992)(with R. Rorty, J. Culler, C. Brooke-Rose; Edited by S.Collini)
"The Search for the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe)" (1995) (La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea, 1993)
"Six Walks in the Fictional Woods" (1994)
"Incontro - Encounter - Rencontre (1996) (in Italian, English, French)
"Belief or Nonbelief? : A Dialogue" (2000) (In cosa crede chi non crede? (with Carlo Maria Martini), 1996).
"Five Moral Pieces" (2001) (Cinque scritti morali, 1997)
"" (1999) (Kant e lÃÂÃÂornitorinco, 1997)
"Serendipities : Language and Lunacy" (1998)
"Experiences in Translation" (2000)
"Mouse or Rat? : Translation as negociation" (2003)

Books for children

(art by Eugenio Carmi)

"The Bomb and the General" (La bomba e il generale, 1966, Rev. 1988)
"The Three Astronauts" (I tre cosmonauti, 1966)
"Gli gnomi di Gnu", 1992 (not translated yet)

Other

Further, Umberto Eco is an expert on the subject of 007, which adds him to the worldwide group of bondologs ("Bondologists," Scandinavian expression for an expert in the field of James Bond).

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).

External links

Official University Website, including CV and full bibliography
Eco's talk in Alexandria on "Vegetal and mineral memory" which considers, among other things, encyclopedias.
Porta Ludovica - Eco fan page.