Umberto Eco Books In Order

The Making of Europe Books In Publication Order

  1. The Search for the Perfect Language (1993)

Save the Story Books In Publication Order

  1. The Story of the Betrothed (2010)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)
  2. The Island of the Day Before (1994)
  3. Baudolino (2000)
  4. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004)
  5. The Name Of The Rose (2008)
  6. The Prague Cemetery (2010)
  7. Numero Zero (2015)

Chapbooks In Publication Order

  1. The Three Astronauts (1966)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. Misreadings (1963)
  2. Stories Upon Stories (With: Dave Eggers,Yiyun Li) (2014)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (1959)
  2. The Open Work (1962)
  3. Travels in Hyperreality (1973)
  4. How to Write a Thesis (1977)
  5. A Theory of Semiotics (1978)
  6. The Role of the Reader (1979)
  7. The Sign of Three (1983)
  8. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
  9. The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (1984)
  10. On The Medieval Theory Of Signs (1989)
  11. The Limits of Interpretation (1990)
  12. From the Tree to the Labyrinth (1990)
  13. Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992)
  14. How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (With: William Weaver) (1992)
  15. The Gnomes of Gnu (1992)
  16. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994)
  17. Apocalypse Postponed (1994)
  18. Faith in Fakes (1995)
  19. Belief or Non-Belief? (1996)
  20. Incontro (1996)
  21. Kant and the Platypus (With: Alastair McEwen) (1997)
  22. Five Moral Pieces (1997)
  23. Serendipities (1998)
  24. Conversations about the End of Time (With: Jean-Claude Carrière,Stephen Jay Gould,Catherine David,Jean Delumeau) (1998)
  25. Talking of Joyce (1998)
  26. Experiences in Translation (2001)
  27. On Literature (2002)
  28. Mouse or Rat? (2003)
  29. History of Beauty (With: Alastair McEwen) (2004)
  30. On Beauty (2004)
  31. Turning Back the Clock (2006)
  32. On Ugliness (2007)
  33. The Infinity of Lists (2009)
  34. This is Not the End of the Book (2009)
  35. Confessions of a Young Novelist (2011)
  36. Inventing the Enemy (2011)
  37. The Book of Legendary Lands (2013)
  38. Chronicles of a Liquid Society (2015)
  39. Libraries: Candida Höfer (2019)
  40. On the Shoulders of Giants (2019)
  41. How to Spot a Fascist (With: Alastair McEwen) (2020)

Dave Eggers Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. How We Are Hungry (By:Dave Eggers) (2005)
  2. Short Short Stories (By:Dave Eggers) (2005)
  3. One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box (By:Dave Eggers,Deb Olin Unferth) (2007)
  4. Stories Upon Stories (With: Dave Eggers,Yiyun Li) (2014)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Cult of Vespa (1997)

The Making of Europe Book Covers

Save the Story Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

ChapBook Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Dave Eggers Short Story Collections Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Umberto Eco Books Overview

The Search for the Perfect Language

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 closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth century discovery of a proto language Indo European for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History. The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

Foucault’s Pendulum

One Colonel Ardenti, who has unnaturally black, brilliantined hair, a carefully groomed mustache, wears maroon socks, and who once served in the Foreign Legion, starts it all. He tells three Milan book editors that he has discovered a coded message about a Templar Plan, centuries old and involving Stonehenge a plan to tap a mystic source of power far greater than atomic energy. The editors, who have spent altogether too much time rewriting crackpot manuscripts on the occult by fanatics and dilettantes, decide to have a little fun. They’ll create a Plan of their own. But how?Randomly they throw together manuscript pages on hermetic thought; The Masters of the World, who live beneath the earth, The Comte de Sain Germain, who lives forever. They add Satanic initiation rites of the Knights of the Temple, Assassins, Rosicrucians, Brazilian voodoo, the Third Reich. And they feed all this, and much more, into their powerful computer, Abulafia.A terrific joke, they think, until the Plan assumes and life and power of its own, and turns deadly as people mysteriously begin to disappear, one by one, starting with Colonel Ardenti.

The Island of the Day Before

After a violent storm in the South Pacific in the year 1643, Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing. As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years’ War in which he lost his father and his illusions; and the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the writing of love letters, and blasphemy. In this fascinating, lyrical tale, Umberto Eco tells of a young dreamer searching for love and meaning; and of a most amazing old Jesuit who, with his clocks and maps, has plumbed the secrets of longitudes, the four moons of Jupiter, and the Flood.

Baudolino

Eco returns to the Middle Ages with Baudolino a wondrous, provocative, beguiling tale of history, myth, and invention. 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 Byzantine 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 foreign languages and skill in relling lies. One day, when still a boy, he met a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander who proves to be the 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 who was 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, pages of extraordinary feeling and poetry, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age. Baudolino is an utterly marvelous tale by the inimitable author of The Name of the Rose.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

Yambo, a sixtyish rare book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn’t recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin. There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love.A fascinating, abundant new novel wide ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart from the incomparable Eco. 20050601

The Name Of The Rose

Book Jacket Status: JacketedA spectacular best seller and now a classic, The Name Of The Rose catapulted Umberto Eco, an Italian professor of semiotics turned novelist, to international prominence. An erudite murder mystery set in a fourteenth century monastery, it is not only a gripping story but also a brilliant exploration of medieval philosophy, history, theology, and logic. In 1327, Brother William of Baskerville is sent to investigate a wealthy Italian abbey whose monks are suspected of heresy. When his mission is overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths patterned on the book of Revelation, Brother William turns detective, following the trail of a conspiracy that brings him face to face with the abbey’s labyrinthine secrets, the subversive effects of laughter, and the medieval Inquisition. Caught in a power struggle between the emperor he serves and the pope who rules the Church, Brother William comes to see that what is at stake is larger than any mere political dispute that his investigation is being blocked by those who fear imagination, curiosity, and the power of ideas. The Name Of The Rose offers the reader not only an ingeniously constructed mystery complete with secret symbols and coded manuscripts but also an unparalleled portrait of the medieval world on the brink of profound transformation.

The Prague Cemetery

19th century Europe from Turin to Prague to Paris abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Mas*ses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies both real and imagined, lay one lone man? What if that evil genius created its most infamous document? Eco takes his readers here on an unforgettable journey through the underbelly of world shattering events. This is Eco at his most exciting, a book immediately hailed as his masterpiece.

The Three Astronauts

A Martian’s concern for a frightened bird shows three space explorers from America, Russia, and China that just because two creatures look different doesn’t mean they have to be enemies.

Misreadings

This is a collection of parodies by the author of ‘The Name of the Rose’ and ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’. Professor Anouk Ooma of Prince Joseph’s Land University addresses his colleagues on recent archaeological findings that shed light on the poetry of Italy before the Explosion, Columbus’ landing in the New World is covered by TV reporters and structural analysis of the art of striptease as performed by Lilly Niagara of the Crazy Horse.

Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages

In the first English translation of this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. First published twenty years ago and now translated into English for the first time, the book juxtaposes theology and science, poetry and mysticism, in order to explore the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture.

The Open Work

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 a major treatise in modern aesthetics and an excellent introduction to Eco’s thought.

Travels in Hyperreality

Eco displays in these essays the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. His range is wide, and his insights are acute, frequently ironic, and often downright funny. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

A Theory of Semiotics

‘…
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.

The Sign of Three

‘…
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

Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

‘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

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas

The well known Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco discloses for the first time to English speaking readers the unsuspected richness, breadth, complexity, and originality of the aesthetic theories advanced by the influential medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas, heretofore known principally as a scholastic theologian. Inheriting his basic ideas and conceptions of art and beauty from the classical world, Aquinas transformed or modified these ideas in the light of Christian theology and of developments in metaphysics and optics during the thirteenth century. Setting the stage with an account of the vivid aesthetic and artistic sensibility that flourished in medieval times, Eco examines Aquinas’s conception of transcendental beauty, his theory of aesthetic perception or visio, and his account of the three conditions of beauty integrity, proportion, and clarity that, centuries later, emerged again in the writings of the young James Joyce. He examines the concrete application of these theories in Aquinas’s reflections on God, mankind, music, poetry, and scripture. He discusses Aquinas’s views on art and compares his poetics with Dante’s. In a final chapter added to the second Italian edition, Eco examines how Aquinas’s aesthetics came to be absorbed and superseded in late medieval times and draws instructive parallels between Thomistic methodology and contemporary structuralism. As the only book length treatment of Aquinas’s aesthetics available in English, this volume should interest philosophers, medievalists, historians, critics, and anyone involved in poetics, aesthetics, or the history of ideas.

On The Medieval Theory Of Signs

In the course of the long debate on the nature and the classification of signs, from Boethius to Ockham, there are at least three lines of thought: the Stoic heritage, that influences Augustine, Abelard and Francis Bacon; the Aristotelian tradition, stemming from the commentaries on ‘De Interpretatione’; and the discussions of the grammarians, from Priscian to the Modistae. Modern interpreters are frequently misled by the fact that the various authors regularly used the same terms. Such a homogenous terminology, however, covers profound theoretical differences. The aim of these essays is to show that the medieval theory of signs does not represent a unique body of semiotic notions: there are diverse and frequently alternative semiotic theories. This book thus represents an attempt to encourage further research on the still unrecognized variety of the semiotic approaches offered by the medieval philosophies of language.

The Limits of Interpretation

‘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.’ DiacriticsUmberto 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.

Interpretation and Overinterpretation

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.

How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (With: William Weaver)

By the author of ‘The Name of the Rose’, this collection of essays offers advice on a wide range of unusual subjects how to recognize a po*rno film, how to take an intelligent holiday, how not to talk about football, how to protect oneself from widows as well as discussing weightier matters of history, politics, economics, literature and philosophy, in such pieces as ‘On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1’ and ‘Three Owls on a Chest of Drawers’.

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist’s techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction’s most basic mechanisms.

Apocalypse Postponed

This collection gathers Eco’s main writings on mass culture published in a wide variety of journals and newspapers from the mid 50s to the late 1980s. Opening with an anti Adornian survey of theories of mass culture, Eco goes on to explore such exotica as La Cicciolina, Charlie Brown, Orwell, Fellini, Italian independent radio and the ‘genius industry’. Umberto Eco is a semiologist and medievalist, and is the author of ‘The Name of the Rose’ and ‘Faith in Fakes’.

Faith in Fakes

By the author of ‘The Name of the Rose’, these essays, written over the last 20 years and culled from newspapers and magazines, explore the rag bag of modern consciousness. Eco considers a wide range of topics, from ‘Superman’ and ‘Casablanca’, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, Jim Jones and mass suicide, and Woody Allen, to holography and waxworks, pop festivals and football, and not least the social and personal implications of tight jeans.

Belief or Non-Belief?

In this stimulating dialogue, often adversarial but always amicable, these two great men, who stand on opposite sides of the church door, discuss some of the most controversial issues of the day. One is the prince of the Church, a respected scholar and one of the pre eminent ecumenical churchmen of Europe; the other the world famous author of ‘The Name of the Rose’, a scholar, philosopher and self declared secularist, a man who writes with equal ease about Thomas Aquinas and James Joyce, about computers and the medieval Templars.

Incontro

‘It is impossible to think about the present or the future of universities without taking into account the fact that universities live in a world dominated by mass media.’ U Eco. Eco wrote this short essay when he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in letters by Laurentian University Canada. The essay appears in English, French, and Italian.

Kant and the Platypus (With: Alastair McEwen)

How do we know that a cat is a cat? Why do we agree on calling the beast a cat? Interesting questions, but an even more intriguing question lies at the heart of all modern philosophy how much of our perception of things depends on our cognitive ability and how much on linguistic resources? At this point semiotics becomes inextricably linked to epistemology, or cognition. In these essays, Umberto Eco explores in depth such subjects as perception, the relationship between language and experience, and iconism that he only touched on in A Theory of Semiotics. Forgoing a formal, systematic treatment, Eco engages in a series of explorations based on common sense, from which flow an abundance of illustrative fables, often with animals as protagonists. Among the characters, a position of prominence is reserved for the platypus, which appears to have been created specifically to ‘put the cat among the pigeons’ as far as many theories of knowledge are concerned. In Kant and the Platypus, Eco shares with us a wealth of ideas at once philosophical and amusing.

Five Moral Pieces

Embracing the web of multiculturalism that has become a fact of contemporary life from New York to New Delhi, Eco argues that we are more connected to people of other traditions and customs than ever before, making tolerance the ultimate value in today’s world. What good, he asks in a talk delivered during the Gulf War, does war do in a world where the flow of goods, services, and information is unstoppable and the enemy is always behind the lines? What makes news today, who decides how it will be presented, and how does the way it is disseminated contribute to the widespread disillusionment with politics in general?In the most personal of the essays, Eco recalls experiencing liberation from fascism in Italy as a boy, and examines the various historical forms of fascism, always with an eye toward such ugly manifestations today. And finally, in an intensely personal open letter to an Italian cardinal, Eco reflects on a question underlying all the reflections in the book: What does it mean to be moral or ethical when one doesn’t believe in God?Thoughtful and subtle as well as pragmatic and relevant, these essays present one of the world’s most important thinkers at the height of his critical powers.

Serendipities

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 endeavor much of it ill conceived that sought to ‘heal the wound of Babel.’ Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and Egyptian were alternately proclaimed as the first language that God gave to Adam, while in keeping with the colonial climate of the time the complex language of the Amerindians in Mexico was viewed as crude and diabolical. In closing, Eco considers the erroneous notion of linguistic perfection and shrewdly observes that the dangers we face lie not in the rules we use to interpret other cultures but in our insistence on making these rules absolute. With the startling combination of erudition and wit, bewildering anecdotes and scholarly rigor that are Eco’s hallmarks, Serendipities is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas.

Conversations about the End of Time (With: Jean-Claude Carrière,Stephen Jay Gould,Catherine David,Jean Delumeau)

A mind expanding discussion of millenarianism by four brilliant thinkers now in paperback. There is nothing special about the year 2000, yet the start of the third millennium proved a focus for many deep anxieties and expectations. Four of the world’s boldest and most celebrated thinkers offer a vast range of insights into how we make sense of time: paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould on dating the Creation, evolutionary ‘deep time,’ and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale; Umberto Eco, novelist, medievalist, and Web fanatic, on the brave new world of cyberspace and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity, and access to knowledge; screenwriter Jean Claude Carri re on ‘the art of slowness’ and attitudes toward time in non Western cultures; and Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse.

Talking of Joyce

Joyce preferred to speak Italian at home so it is no surprise to find two Italian scholars lecturing and writing about James Joyce in English. This book contains lectures on Joyce by Umberto Eco and Liberato Santoro Brienza.

Experiences in Translation

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 G rard 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.

On Literature

After the opening essay on the general significance of literature, Eco examines a number of major authors from the Western canon. A stimulating chapter on the poetic qualities of Dante’s Paradiso is followed by one on the style of the Communist Manifesto. The next three essays centre on nineteenth and early twentieth century literature: one on the French writer Nerval’s masterpiece, Sylvie a major influence on Eco and a novella that he translated into Italian, one on Oscar Wilde’s love of paradox, and one on Joyce’s views on language. The last three pieces deal with the road that leads from Cervantes via Swift to Borges’ Library of Babel, then an essay on Eco’s own anxiety about Borges’ influence on him, and the volume ends with an article on the enigmatic Italian critic and anthropologist Piero Camporesi. On Literature is a provocative and entertaining collection of sprightly essays on the key texts that have shaped Eco the novelist and critic. This volume will appeal to anyone interested in how new light is shed on old masters by a great contemporary mind.

Mouse or Rat?

Based on a series of lectures on translation these essays are thought provoking and compelling discussions on the difficulties of translating faithfully. Using examples from classic literary texts including his own bestselling novels Eco examines the rights and wrongs, the misunderstandings and the ‘negotiations’ needed in order to translate. He examines various problems in translation with great wit and humour. Pointing out the pitfalls of literal translation, he asks a machine to translate the beginning of the Bible into Spanish then back into English, then into German and then again back into English. The result is very funny but as Eco points out, it is still vaguely recognisable as a version of the Bible and obviously not the first adventure of Harry Potter. He discusses every form of interpretation and expression from poetry to film and music always demonstrating with vivid examples the disastrous but often hilarious outcome of mistranslation. The main point of all these essays is that translation is always a matter of negotiation; whether it be a loss or a gain on either side a translator’s job is to decide what elements are vital and which may be neglected.

History of Beauty (With: Alastair McEwen)

Now in paperback, Umberto Eco’s groundbreaking and much acclaimed first illustrated book has been a critical success since its first publication in 2004. What is beauty? Umberto Eco, among Italy s finest and most important contemporary thinkers, explores the nature, the meaning, and the very history of the idea of beauty in Western culture. The profound and subtle text is lavishly illustrated with abundant examples of sublime painting and sculpture and lengthy quotations from writers and philosophers. This is the first paperback edition of History of Beauty, making this intellectual and philosophical journey with one of the world s most acclaimed thinkers available in a more compact and affordable format. From the Trade Paperback edition.

On Beauty

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.

Turning Back the Clock

The time: 2000 to 2005, the years of neoconservatism, terrorism, the twenty four hour news cycle, the ascension of Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Umberto Eco’s response is a provocative, passionate, and witty series of essays which originally appeared in the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and L Espresso that leaves no slogan unexamined, no innovation unexposed. What led us into this age of hot wars and media populism, and how was it sold to us as progress? Eco discusses such topics as racism, mythology, the European Union, rhetoric, the Middle East, technology, September 11, medieval Latin, television ads, globalization, Harry Potter, anti Semitism, logic, the Tower of Babel, intelligent design, Italian street demonstrations, fundamentalism, The Da Vinci Code, and magic and magical thinking. The famous author and respected scholar shows his practical, engaged side: an intellectual involved in events both local and global, a man concerned about taste, politics, education, ethics, and where our troubled world is headed.

On Ugliness

In the mold of his acclaimed History of Beauty, renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts. What is the voyeuristic impulse behind our attraction to the gruesome and the horrible? Where does the magnetic appeal of the sordid and the scandalous come from? Is ugliness also in the eye of the beholder? Eco s encyclopedic knowledge and captivating storytelling skills combine in this ingenious study of the Ugly, revealing that what we often shield ourselves from and shun in everyday life is what we re most attracted to subliminally. Topics range from Milton s Satan to Goethe s Mephistopheles; from witchcraft and medieval torture tactics to martyrs, hermits, and penitents; from lunar births and disemboweled corpses to mythic monsters and sideshow freaks; and from Decadentism and picturesque ugliness to the tacky, kitsch, and camp, and the aesthetics of excess and vice. With abundant examples of painting and sculpture ranging from ancient Greek amphorae to Bosch, Brueghel, and Goya among others, and with quotations from the most celebrated writers and philosophers of each age, this provocative discussion explores in depth the concepts of evil, depravity, and darkness in art and literature. From the Hardcover edition.

The Infinity of Lists

Best selling author and philosopher Umberto Eco is currently resident at the Louvre, and his chosen theme of study is ‘the vertigo of lists.’ Reflecting on this enormous trove of human achievements, in his lyrical intellectual style he has embarked on an investigation of the phenomenon of cataloging and collecting. This book, featuring lavish reproductions of artworks from the Louvre and other world famous collections, is a philosophical and artistic sequel to Eco’s recent acclaimed books, History of Beauty and On Ugliness, books in which he delved into the psychology, philosophy, history, and art of human forms. Eco is a modern day Diderot, and here he examines the Western mind s predilection for list making and the encyclopedic. His central thesis is that in Western culture a passion for accumulation is recurring: lists of saints, catalogues of plants, collections of art. This impulse has recurred through the ages from music to literature to art. Eco refers to this obsession itself as a ‘giddiness of lists’ but shows how in the right hands it can be a ‘poetics of catalogues.’ From medieval reliquaries to Andy Warhol s compulsive collecting, Umberto Eco reflects in his inimitably inspiring way on how such catalogues mirror the spirit of their times.

Confessions of a Young Novelist

Umberto Eco published his first novel, The Name of the Rose, in 1980, when he was nearly fifty. In these confessions, the author, now in his late seventies, looks back on his long career as a theorist and his more recent work as a novelist, and explores their fruitful conjunction. He begins by exploring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction playfully, seriously, brilliantly roaming across this frontier. Good nonfiction, he believes, is crafted like a whodunnit, and a skilled novelist builds precisely detailed worlds through observation and research. Taking us on a tour of his own creative method, Eco recalls how he designed his fictional realms. He began with specific images, made choices of period, location, and voice, composed stories that would appeal to both sophisticated and popular readers. The blending of the real and the fictive extends to the inhabitants of such invented worlds. Why are we moved to tears by a character’s plight? In what sense do Anna Karenina, Gregor Samsa, and Leopold Bloom exist ?At once a medievalist, philosopher, and scholar of modern literature, Eco astonishes above all when he considers the pleasures of enumeration. He shows that the humble list, the potentially endless series, enables us to glimpse the infinite and approach the ineffable. This young novelist is a master who has wise things to impart about the art of fiction and the power of words. 20110110

How We Are Hungry (By:Dave Eggers)

How We Are Hungry is a gripping, lyrical, and always intensely soulful group of stories written over the past four years. Though they range from a doomed Irish setter’s tales of running and jumping ‘After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned’ to a bitterly comic meditation on suicide and friendship ‘Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance’, the stories share a haunting and haunted sense of mortality. Though full of bursts of levity and humor, the book is deeply informed by the troubled times in which it was written. How We Are Hungry includes many never before published stories, along with a number of pieces that first appeared in magazines, both well known Zoetrope, The New Yorker and small and independent h2s04, Ninth Letter. All previously published stories have been significantly revised. The urgency and experimentalism of Eggers’s earlier work are still present, but are brought to a new level of precision and craft, injecting fresh life into traditional forms. Narratives are often linear, told by distinct and varied voices, and settings stretch from Egypt to Interstate 5.

One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box (By:Dave Eggers,Deb Olin Unferth)

In the grand tradition of Neapolitan ice cream, ZZ Top, and Cerberus, the tri headed guardian of Hades, this set combines individual, short fiction collections by three talented practitioners of the short short form. Manguso’s Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape is a series of crystalline recollections of her childhood misadventures; Eggers How the Water Feels to the Fishes brings a deadpan absurdism to the intimacy and vision of his earlier work; and Unferth s rollicking Minor Robberies unleashes a horde of off kilter characters and their indelible misadventures. Each author s work comes in its own hardcover, foil stamped volume, and the three volumes are housed in an elegant slipcase.

The Cult of Vespa

Here is the entertaining history about the most successful ‘cult scooter’ Vespa in its 50th anniversary. Not many products reach the goal of a fifty year life span. The 50 years of Vespa are even more striking if one considers the condition and the period in which it came to existence. Many post war inventions were forgotten when income rose and life standard improved. But Vespa instead, developed from a utility vehicle, into an international success, a ‘cult object’, which has given rise to the creation of associations and collector’s guilds world wide. Text by Umberto Eco, Omar Calabrese, Lina Wertmuller, Fran ois Burkhardt, Maurizio Bertini, and many other celebrities. English/Italian

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