Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco , born the January 5th 1932 with Alexandria ( Alessandria ), Piedmont (Italy) is the universally known author of many university tests on the Sémiotique, the medieval Esthétique , the communication of mass, the Linguistique and the Philosophie. It is especially known general public for its esques works Romance.
It is titular pulpit of Sémiotique and director of the University of the Social sciences with the Université of Bologna.
Biography and Works
Graduate in Philosophy in 1954 with the University of Turin (with a thesis on Thomas d' Aquin), it is interested initially in the medieval Scolastique ( Sviluppo dell' estetica medieval , 1959), then with the Art of avant-garde ( open Work , 1962) and with the contemporary popular culture ( Apocalittici E integrati , 1964). He meets an immediate success in Italy.
Become then a pioneer of research in semiotics ( the Structure goes away , 1968, Trattato di semiotica general , 1975), it develops a theory of the reception ( Lector in confabulated , The Limits off Interpretation , The role off the Reader ) which places it among the European thinkers most important of the end of the 20th century.
Its first novel, the Name of the pink (1980) is a world success with 16 million specimens sold to date and translations in twenty-six languages, in spite of dense and difficult contents. Umberto Eco applies in this “medieval police officer” his semiological concepts and its theories of the language, these same as he teaches in Turin. In 2002, the daily newspaper Repubblica sells it like supplement with the newspaper; nearly 2 million books are sold the same day.
Its second novel, the Pendulum of Foucault (1988) is also an enormous success, though for reciprocal ratios: public, guided by Eco, share with discovered enigmatic or prophetic symbols, with wrong way of the denunciation of the esotericism which is however the matter of the author, but this one consequently shows occasion which the reader is free of his interpretations (theory that Eco continues to develop in its theoretical works on the reception, Limits of interpretation in 1990). The book turns besides into ridiculous interpretation to excess of the established facts or legendary of the history, by drawing with an equal success from dimensions from simple a newsstand the same kind from information from cosmic range that some are believed founded in reading in those of the Pyramide of Khéops.
Umberto Eco gives then several conferences on its theories of the Narration in literature, Six walks in the wood of the novel and besides (1996), on the Traduction, Experiences in translation (2000), and on the Littérature, Of the literature (2003).
Throughout its career, he writes regularly in daily newspapers and weekly magazines of the chronicles on subjects of the hour, with a concern “of flushing out direction where one would be carried to see only facts” .
Several collections, of which only some were translated, gather the texts the most amusing, Pastiches and Postiches (1988) ( Diario minimo , 1963) and How to travel with a salmon (1998) ( It secondo diario minimo , 1992). Some other collections gather polemical texts, Croire in what (1998), Five questions of morals (2000), Islam E occidente (2002).
Among its least known activities, Umberto Eco is member of the International forum of UNESCO (1992), of the universal Academy of the cultures of Paris (1992), of American Academy off Arts and Letters (1998) and was named with the council of the library of Alexandria (2003).
Its most original nomination is undoubtedly that of Satrape Collège of 'Pataphysique in 2001.
All its work justifies this nomination, but its writings pataphysiques are not always most popular. However, the third part of How to travel with a salmon more particularly exposes in a ludic and clear way some of its research on the Pataphysique.
It defines in it in particular the cacopédie , “scientifically explains improvement ultimate of pataphysic”, us why it is impossible to have a chart on the scale 1:1 of an empire, why Héraclite was in the error, that it is possible to imagine a machine producing a work without energy nor raw material, but that the reverse is unimaginable.
It still gives some examples of oceanography Tibetan , history of Arctic agriculture or of anatomy of the kangaroos of Burgundy . Other fields, of type Byzantine (as the history of the colonies of the principality of Monaco ) appear to raise of the tetracapiloctomy , erudite name of art to split hairs (not to be confused with the luthomiction , which is art to piss in a violin).
The great dream of Umberto Eco, the raison d'être of its interminable and shifted encyclopedic company, it is perhaps in the final analysis a imaginary library of Alexandria, not of the Alexandria of Egypt, but of its birthplace of Piedmont. This city “ without ideal and passion ”, “ without rhetoric and myth, mission and truth ” would be like the originating, inaccessible place from where one can laugh at the remainder. To reach this library, it would be necessary to go indefinitely of page on page.
Of a scholarship to give the giddiness, but remaining always pedagog, Umberto Eco is one of the most important authors of the contemporary Occident. One admits especially the merit to him to be a brilliant popularizer. The fascination of its public is due less to the originality of its ideas than to its way of making them alive, generous available.
Eco is not that admired, he is also admiror. He confesses for example the fascination that he felt for the chapter “This will kill that”, of Victor Hugo, in Notre-Dame de Paris . It is true that this chapter (that Hugo had however drawn aside from the first edition by regard for his friend Lamennais) represents an important work of… semiology.