Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco OMRIwas an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician and university professor. He is best known internationally for his 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucaultand L'isola del giorno prima. His novel Il cimitero di Praga, released in 2010, was a best-seller...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 January 1932
CountryItaly
Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.
I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.
Conspiracies do exist. Probably in this moment in New York there is an economic group making a conspiracy in order to buy three banks. But if they succeed, they are immediately discovered.
Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose.
The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent centuries killing each other.
Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy.
The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.
The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.
The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.
There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.
With all of its defects, the global market makes war less likely, even between the U.S.A. and China.
The most interesting letters I received about 'The Name of the Rose' were from people in the Midwest that maybe didn't understand exactly, but wanted to understand more and who were excited by this picture of a world which was not their own.
Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.
But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.