“We have believed that the whole world is an enigma, an innocent enigma, which our frantic efforts are terrible to interpret as an underlying truth.”
At this point, Umberto Eco can be a concise introduction to his important work in semiotics, aesthetics, linguistics, and his best-selling essays. Throughout many of Eco’s works, he has been concerned with how individuals derive meaning from the information and symbols circulating in their culture, and he has turned this study into a very insightful philosophy, erudite criticism, and sustained innovative thinking that deeply embraces this primary concept. .
Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria, Italy in 1932. His father was an accountant, but also a military man who fought in three wars. The last name family, Eco, is taken from the first letters of the phrase “offered from heaven”. a latin phrase this meaning “a gift from heaven” – the urbane grandfather gave this name to Umberto.
First, Umberto’s father wanted his son to become a lawyer. But he decided to study medieval-literature and philosophy at the University of Turin, finally writing his doctoral dissertation on the 13th century theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas; which process caused Umberto to lose faith in religion and become an atheist.
After receiving his degree, he began lecturing at the University of Turin and became a culture editor for Radiotelevision Italiana. A short time later he became a columnist for the magazine Il Verri, which was devoted to avant-garde ideas and various experiments in linguistics. These posts were collected in a book, Misreadings.
The Open Book was the first treatise on Eco semiotics, which is the consideration of symbols and signs and how they convey meaning to people according to their individual perspectives, as well as how signs and meanings affect different cultures. This fact runs through many of Eco’s major works, both fiction and non-fiction. In Open Works, he argued that works of literature that are more open to interpretation are some of the most valuable, while also dealing extensively with contextual concepts – how words and sentences placed in different contexts can greatly change meaning.
Humbert, having decided that he was a respected semiotician, became a novelist. His first and most popular novel, The Name of the Rose, was basically a detective story with a monk as the protagonist (a monk solves murders that center around his monastery’s library), but Eco also brought in many of his original ideas. literary theory and semiotics, while also infusing other types of mystery with new aspects, and also infusing extensive biblical knowledge. . When asked how he got the idea for the book, Eco replied, “I missed the poison monk.” Inspired by his semiotic theory that texts are more interesting when they are open to multiple interpretations, Eco strove to make his story complex and even indecipherable, to contain various layers of meaning. Today they have sold over nine million copies of the novel, and a movie starring Sean Connery was also made on the basis. the book
After Writing a successful novel, Eco returned to semiotics and wrote several books. One of which was the Search for the Perfect Language. With this work, he tackled the linguistic idea that collapsed before the tower of Babel, that people on earth have a perfect speech language that has been developed. in the garden of Eden; and this language sufficiently captured the essence of all worldly things and ideas. Eco-historical treatises on this idea have been researched and include many other topics such as Cabalism, various grammars, and even narratives. and the ideas of other people who tried to create their own “perfect” languages.
There are many other ideas related to semiotics that are important to Eco, and which books or articles he wrote about it. One of these is hermeneutics, the theory of understanding or interpreting texts to see if the “truth” can be arrived at through textual study (which many of his characters do in these novels). Even with hypertextuality, in which way all literary texts can be seen to be connected, and thus their interpretation is affected as a result. Much of the work of academic economists centers around the first notion of how our beliefs are shaped by our cognitive abilities and perspectives, and with the notion that human consciousness creates its own meaning.
After his popular novel, The Name of the Rose, Eco wondered if his achievement of writing success was necessary. only good luck or not. And so he began work on his second novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, which also became a best seller. Although the topics are too complex to explain here, suffice it to say that we are dealing with many of the ideas developed in The Name of the Rose, but on another topic. Interestingly, Eco’s wife, Renate Ramge, a graphic artist born in Germany, helped with the German translation of Foucault’s Pendulum.
Although Eco’s stories are popular with many intellectuals, some people find his fiction difficult to read. They say that the frequent historical allusions and the intricate plot are too difficult to penetrate. But if readers simply ignore allusions they don’t understand, they can still see the bigger picture enough to enjoy the book. We must also remember that Eco intended his books to be cryptic, allowing for multiple interpretations. He sometimes said that he wanted many meanings in his comments, to parallel the numerous meanings found in the world.
Today, Umberto Eco works at the University of Bologna as a professor of semiotics, a position he obtained when he was only 39 years old. He has houses in both Arimine and Milan, and has received more than thirty honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including France, Russia, Germany, Canada, in United – (Yale and Harvard asked him for short teaching appointments) – and many others. He also wrote books for children.
Umberto Eco’s personality is such that he is ready to have lively conversations, and in fact cries out to pass. He smoking several packs of cigarettes a day while working on many projects which he says are important to him because he feels perish if it has not something.
Eco is probably the first respected semiotician in his field to break through academic boundaries and became a best-selling novelist. And the world is a better place because of it.
