Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazineL'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of theRomantic paintings ofFrancesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016.[4][5] At the time of his death, he was anEmeritus professor at theUniversity of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life.[6] In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies.
Eco was born on 5 January 1932 in the city ofAlessandria, inPiedmont in northern Italy. The spread ofItalian fascism throughout the region influenced his childhood. At the age of ten, he received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles after responding positively to the young Italian fascist writing prompt of "Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?"[7] His father, Giulio, one of thirteen children, was an accountant before the government called him to serve in three wars. DuringWorld War II, Umberto and his mother, Giovanna (Bisio), moved to a small village in the Piedmontese mountainside.[8] His village was liberated in 1945, and he was exposed to American comic books, the European Resistance, and the Holocaust.[7] Eco received aSalesian education and made references to the order and its founder in his works and interviews.[9]
Towards the end of his life, Eco came to believe that his family name was an acronym ofex caelis oblatus (from Latin: a gift from the heavens). As was the custom at the time, the name had been given to his grandfather (afoundling) by an official in city hall. In a 2011 interview, Eco explained that a friend happened to come across the acronym on a list ofJesuit acronyms in theVatican Library, informing him of the likely origin of the name.[10]
After graduating, Eco worked for the state broadcasting stationRadiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) in Milan, producing a variety of cultural programming. Following the publication of his first book in 1956, he became an assistant lecturer at his alma mater. In 1958, Eco left RAI and the University of Turin to complete 18 months of compulsory military service in theItalian Army.
In 1959, following his return to university teaching, Eco was approached byValentino Bompiani to edit a series on "Idee nuove" (New Ideas) for hiseponymous publishing house in Milan. According to the publisher, he became aware of Eco through his short pamphlet of cartoons and verseFilosofi in libertà (Philosophers in Freedom, or Liberated Philosophers), which had originally been published in a limited print run of 550 under theJames Joyce-inspired pseudonym Daedalus.[11]
That same year, Eco published his second book,Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale (The Development ofMedieval Aesthetics), a scholarly monograph building on his work on Aquinas. Earning hislibera docenza in aesthetics in 1961, Eco was promoted to the position of lecturer in the same subject in 1963, before leaving the University of Turin to take a position as lecturer in Architecture at theUniversity of Milan in 1964.[12]
Early writings on semiotics and popular culture (1961–1964)
Among his work for a general audience, in 1961 Eco's short essay "Phenomenology ofMike Bongiorno", a critical analysis of a popular but unrefined quiz show host, appeared as part of a series of articles by Eco on mass media published in the magazine of the tyre manufacturerPirelli. In it, Eco observed that "[Bongiorno] does not provoke inferiority complexes, despite presenting himself as an idol, and the public acknowledge him, by being grateful to him and loving him. He represents an ideal that nobody need strive to reach because everyone is already at his level." Receiving notoriety among the general public thanks to widespread media coverage, the essay was later included in the collectionDiario minimo (1963).[13][14]
Over this period, Eco began seriously developing his ideas on the "open" text and on semiotics, writing many essays on these subjects. In 1962 he publishedOpera aperta (translated into English as "The Open Work"). In it, Eco argued that literary texts are fields of meaning, rather than strings of meaning; and that they are understood as open, internally dynamic and psychologically engaged fields. Literature which limits one's potential understanding to a single, unequivocal line, theclosed text, remains the least rewarding, while texts which are the most active between mind, society and life (open texts) are the liveliest and best—although valuation terminology was not his primary focus. Eco came to these positions through the study of language and from semiotics, rather than from psychology orhistorical analysis (as did theorists such asWolfgang Iser, on the one hand, andHans Robert Jauss, on the other).
From 1965 to 1969, he was Professor of Visual Communications at theUniversity of Florence, where he gave the influential[15] lecture "Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare", which coined the influential term "semiological guerrilla", and influenced the theorization of guerrilla tactics against mainstreammass media culture, such asguerrilla television andculture jamming.[16] Among the expressions used in the essay are "communications guerrilla warfare" and "cultural guerrilla".[17][18] The essay was later included in Eco's bookFaith in Fakes.
Eco's approach to semiotics is often referred to as "interpretative semiotics". In his first book-length elaboration, his theory appears inLa struttura assente (1968; literally:The Absent Structure).
In 1969 he left to become Professor of Semiotics atMilan Polytechnic, spending his first year as a visiting professor atNew York University.[12] In 1971 he took up a position as associate professor at theUniversity of Bologna and spent 1972 as a visiting professor atNorthwestern University. Following the publication ofA Theory of Semiotics in 1975, he was promoted to Professor of Semiotics at theUniversity of Bologna.[12][19] That same year, Eco stepped down from his position as senior non-fiction editor at Bompiani.
The Name of the Rose andFoucault's Pendulum (1975–1988)
From 1977 to 1978 Eco was a visiting professor atYale University and then atColumbia University. He returned to Yale from 1980 to 1981, and Columbia in 1984. During this time he completedThe Role of the Reader (1979) andSemiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984).
InFoucault's Pendulum (1988), three under-employed editors who work for a minor publishing house decide to amuse themselves by inventing a conspiracy theory. Their conspiracy, which they call "The Plan", is about an immense and intricate plot to take over the world by a secret order descended from theKnights Templar. As the game goes on, the three slowly become obsessed with the details of this plan. The game turns dangerous when outsiders learn of The Plan and believe that the men have really discovered the secret to regaining the lost treasure of the Templars.
Anthropology of the West andThe Island of the Day Before (1988–2000)
In 1988, Eco founded the Department ofMedia Studies at theUniversity of the Republic of San Marino, and in 1992 he founded the Institute of Communication Disciplines at the University of Bologna, later founding the Higher School for the Study of the Humanities at the same institution.[23][24]
In 1988, at the University of Bologna, Eco created an unusual program calledAnthropology of the West from the perspective of non-Westerners (African and Chinese scholars), as defined by their own criteria. Eco developed this transcultural international network based on the idea ofAlain le Pichon inWest Africa. The Bologna program resulted in the first conference inGuangzhou, China, in 1991 entitled "Frontiers of Knowledge". The first event was soon followed by an Itinerant Euro-Chinese seminar on "Misunderstandings in the Quest for the Universal" along the silk trade route fromGuangzhou to Beijing. The latter culminated in a book entitledThe Unicorn and the Dragon,[25] which discussed the question of the creation of knowledge inChina and inEurope. Scholars contributing to this volume were from China, includingTang Yijie, Wang Bin and Yue Daiyun, as well as fromEurope: Furio Colombo,Antoine Danchin,Jacques Le Goff,Paolo Fabbri andAlain Rey.[26]
Eco publishedThe Limits of Interpretation in 1990.
That same year, Eco published his third novel,The Island of the Day Before (1994). The book, set in the 17th century, is about a man stranded on a ship within sight of an island which he believes is on the other side of the international date-line. The main character is trapped by his inability to swim and instead spends the bulk of the book reminiscing on his life and the adventures that brought him to be stranded.
He returned to semiotics inKant and the Platypus in 1997, a book which Eco reputedly warned his fans away from, saying, "This a hard-core book. It's not a page-turner. You have to stay on every page for two weeks with your pencil. In other words, don't buy it if you are not Einstein."[28]
In 2000, a seminar inTimbuktu was followed up with another gathering in Bologna to reflect on the conditions of reciprocal knowledge between East and West. This, in turn, gave rise to a series of conferences inBrussels, Paris andGoa, culminating inBeijing in 2007. The topics of the Beijing conference were "Order and Disorder", "New Concepts of War and Peace", "Human Rights" and "Social Justice and Harmony". Eco presented the opening lecture. Among those giving presentations were anthropologists Balveer Arora,Varun Sahni, andRukmini Bhaya Nair from India, Moussa Sow from Africa, Roland Marti andMaurice Olender from Europe, Cha Insuk fromKorea, and Huang Ping and Zhao Tingyang from China. Also on the program were scholars from the fields of law and science includingAntoine Danchin,Ahmed Djebbar and Dieter Grimm.[30] Eco's interest in east–west dialogue to facilitate international communication and understanding also correlates with his related interest in the international auxiliary languageEsperanto.
Eco at his home in 2010Umberto Eco photographed byOliver Mark, Milan 2011
Baudolino was published in 2000. Baudolino is a much-travelled polyglot Piedmontese scholar who saves the Byzantine historianNiketas Choniates during the sack of Constantinople in theFourth Crusade. Claiming to be an accomplished liar, he confides his history, from his childhood as a peasant lad endowed with a vivid imagination, through his role as adopted son ofEmperor Frederick Barbarossa, to his mission to visit the mythical realm ofPrester John. Throughout his retelling, Baudolino brags about his ability to swindle and tell tall tales, leaving the historian (and the reader) unsure of just how much of his story was a lie.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2005) is aboutGiambattista Bodoni, an old bookseller specializing in antiques who emerges from a coma with only some memories to recover his past. Bodoni is pressed to make a very difficult choice, one between his past and his future. He must either abandon his past to live his future or regain his past and sacrifice his future.[31]
The Prague Cemetery, Eco's sixth novel, was published in 2010. It is the story of a secret agent who "weaves plots, conspiracies, intrigues and attacks, and helps determine the historical and political fate of the European Continent". The book is a narrative of the rise of Modern-dayantisemitism, by way of theDreyfus affair,The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other important 19th-century events which gave rise to hatred and hostility toward theJewish people.[31]
In 2012, Eco andJean-Claude Carrière published a book of conversations on the future of information carriers.[32] Eco criticized social networks, saying for example that "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots."[33][34]
From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation (2014).
Numero Zero was published in 2015. Set in 1992 and narrated by Colonna, a hack journalist working on a Milan newspaper, it offers a satire of Italy's kickback and bribery culture[35] as well as, among many things, the legacy offascism.[citation needed]
Collège de 'Pataphysique, stamp of Satrap Umberto Eco. ByJean-Max Albert Rt, 2001
A group ofavant-garde artists, painters, musicians and writers, whom he had befriended at RAI, theNeoavanguardia or Gruppo '63, became an important and influential component in Eco's writing career.[36][37]
In 1971, Eco co-foundedVersus: Quaderni di studi semiotici (known asVSamong Italian academics), a semiotic journal.VS is used by scholars whose work is related to signs and signification. The journal's foundation and activities have contributed to semiotics as an academic field in its own right, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. Most of the well-known European semioticians, including Eco,A. J. Greimas, Jean-Marie Floch, andJacques Fontanille, as well as philosophers and linguists likeJohn Searle andGeorge Lakoff, have published original articles inVS. His work with Serbian and Russian scholars and writers included thoughts onMilorad Pavić and a meeting withAlexander Genis.[38]
Eco's fiction has enjoyed a wide audience around the world, with many translations. His novels are full of subtle, often multilingual, references to literature and history. Eco's work illustrates the concept ofintertextuality, or the inter-connectedness of all literary works. Eco citedJames Joyce andJorge Luis Borges as the two modern authors who have influenced his work the most.[41]
Umberto Eco did not consider hypertexts a valid support for a novel. In his opinion, multimedia added nothing to the cultural value of the work; it only integrated its contents. In 1995, during a presentation at the Milan Triennale University, he declared: "I have seen several multimedia works, and I personally collaborated in the drafting of a publication of this type. They gave me a computer on which to run the finished work, but now remotely of just one year this machine is already outdated, rendered obsolete and unusable with the most recent multimedia works."[42]
Eco was also a translator: he translated into ItalianRaymond Queneau'sExercices de style (1947). Eco's translation was published under the titleEsercizi di stile in 1983. He was also the translator ofSylvie, a novella byGérard de Nerval.[43]
As an academic studying philosophy, semiotics, and culture, Eco divided critics as to whether his theorizing should be seen as brilliant or an unnecessary vanity project obsessing over minutiae, while his fiction writing stunned critics with its simultaneous complexity and popularity. In his 1980 review ofThe Role of the Reader, philosopherRoger Scruton, attacking Eco's esoteric tendencies, writes that, "[Eco seeks] the rhetoric of technicality, the means of generating so much smoke for so long that the reader will begin to blame his own lack of perception, rather than the author's lack of illumination, for the fact that he has ceased to see."[44] In his 1986 review ofFaith in Fakes andArt and Beauty in the Middle Ages, art historianNicholas Penny, meanwhile, accuses Eco of pandering, writing "I suspect that Eco may have first been seduced from intellectual caution, if not modesty, by the righteous cause of 'relevance' (a word much in favour when the earlier of these essays appeared) – a cause which Medievalists may be driven to embrace with particularly desperate abandon."[45]
At the other end of the spectrum, Eco has been praised for his levity and encyclopedic knowledge, which allowed him to make abstruse academic subjects accessible and engaging. In a 1980 review ofThe Name of the Rose, literary critic and scholarFrank Kermode refers toTheory of Semiotics, as "a vigorous but difficult treatise", finding Eco's novel, "a wonderfully interesting book – a very odd thing to be born of a passion for the Middle Ages and for semiotics, and a very modern pleasure."[46]Gilles Deleuze cites Eco's 1962 bookThe Open Work approvingly in his seminal 1968 textDifference and Repetition, a book whichpoststructuralist philosopherJacques Derrida is said to have also taken inspiration from.[47][48] In an obituary by the philosopher and literary critic Carlin Romano, meanwhile, Eco is described as having "[become], over time, the critical conscience at the center of Italian humanistic culture, uniting smaller worlds like no one before him."[48]
In 2017, a retrospective of Eco's work was published byOpen Court as the 35th volume in the prestigiousLibrary of Living Philosophers, edited by Sara G. Beardsworth andRandall E. Auxier, featuring essays by 23 contemporary scholars.[49]
Following the publication ofThe Name of the Rose in 1980, Eco was awarded theStrega prize in 1981, Italy's most prestigious literary award, receiving the Anghiari prize the same year. The following year, he received the Mendicis prize, and in 1985 the McLuhan Teleglobe prize.[12] In 2005, Eco was honoured with theKenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, along withRoger Angell.[50] In 2010, Eco was invited to join theAccademia dei Lincei.[51]
In September 1962 he marriedRenate Ramge [de], a German graphic designer and art teacher with whom he had a son and a daughter.
Eco divided his time between an apartment inMilan and a vacation house nearUrbino. He had a 30,000-volume library in the former and a 20,000-volume library in the latter.[60]
Eco died at his Milanese home ofpancreatic cancer,[61] from which he had been suffering for two years, on the night of 19 February 2016.[62][63] From 2008 to the time of his death at the age of 84, he was a professor emeritus at theUniversity of Bologna, where he had taught since 1971.[62][64][65][66]
Eco's private library collection was the subject of a 2023 documentary film by the directorDavide Ferrario, the documentary was titledUmberto Eco: A Library of the World[69][70]
Trattato di semiotica generale (1975 – English translation:A Theory of Semiotics, 1976)
Il Superuomo di massa (1976)
Come si fa una tesi di laurea (1977 – English translation:How to Write a Thesis, 2015)
Dalla periferia dell'impero (1977)
Lector in fabula (1979)
A Semiotic Landscape. Panorama sémiotique. Proceedings of the 1st Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (=Approaches to Semiotics, 29, Mouton 1979, with Seymour Chatman andJean-Marie Klinkenberg).
The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979, compilation of essays fromOpera aperta,Apocalittici e integrati,Forme del contenuto (1971),Il Superuomo di massa,Lector in Fabula).
Sette anni di desiderio (1983)
Postille al nome della rosa (1983 – English translation:Postscript to The Name of the Rose, 1984)
Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio (1984 – English translation:Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, 1984)
De Bibliotheca (1986 – in Italian and French)
Lo strano caso della Hanau 1609 (1989 – French translation:L'Enigme de l'Hanau 1609, 1990)
I limiti dell'interpretazione (1990 –The Limits of Interpretation, 1990)
Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992, with R. Rorty, J. Culler, C. Brooke-Rose; edited by S. Collini)
Il secondo diario minimo (1992)
La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea (1993 – English translation:The Search for the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe), 1995)
Sulla letteratura (2003 – English translation byMartin McLaughlin:On Literature, 2004)
Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation (2003)
Storia della bellezza (2004, co-edited with Girolamo de Michele – English translation:History of Beauty/On Beauty, 2004)
A passo di gambero. Guerre calde e populismo mediatico (Bompiani, 2006 – English translation by Alastair McEwen:Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism, 2007)
Storia della bruttezza (Bompiani, 2007 – English translation:On Ugliness, 2007)
Dall'albero al labirinto: studi storici sul segno e l'interpretazione (Bompiani, 2007 – English translation by Anthony Oldcorn:From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation, 2014)
La Vertigine della Lista (Rizzoli, 2009 – English translation:The Infinity of Lists)
Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali (Bompiani, 2011 – English translation byRichard Dixon:Inventing the Enemy, 2012)
Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari (Bompiani, 2013 – English translation by Alastair McEwen:The Book of Legendary Lands, 2013)
Pape Satàn Aleppe: Cronache di una società liquida (Nave di Teseo, 2016 – English translation by Richard Dixon:Chronicles of a Liquid Society, 2017)
Sulle spalle dei giganti (Collana I fari, Milano, La nave di Teseo, 2017,ISBN978-88-934-4271-8 – English translation by Alastair McEwen:On the Shoulders of Giants, Harvard UP, 2019)
La bomba e il generale (1966, Rev. 1988 – English translation:The Bomb and the General Harcourt Children's Books (J); 1st edition (February 1989)ISBN978-0-15-209700-4)
I tre cosmonauti (1966 – English translation:The Three Cosmonauts Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd; First edition (3 April 1989)ISBN978-0-436-14094-5)
Gli gnomi di Gnu (1992 – English translation:The Gnomes of Gnu Bompiani; 1. ed edition (1992)ISBN978-88-452-1885-9)
^Nöth, Winfried (21 August 2017), "Umberto Eco: Structuralist and Poststructuralist at Once",Umberto Eco in His Own Words, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 111–118,doi:10.1515/9781501507144-014,ISBN978-1-5015-0714-4
^Umberto Eco,Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 25.
^Thomson, Ian (20 February 2016)."Umberto Eco obituary".the Guardian.Archived from the original on 2 March 2017. Retrieved1 March 2017.
^Strangelove, Michael (2005).The Empire of Mind: Digital Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement. University of Toronto Press. pp. 104–105.ISBN978-0-8020-3818-0.
^Fiske, John (1989).Understanding Popular Culture. Routledege, London. p. 19.
^The Unicorn and the Dragon, Le Pichon, Alain; Yue Dayun (eds.) (1996), Beijing University Press. (bilingual French/English edition). French edition republished in 2003 and can be downloaded from publisher at:https://www.eclm.fr/livre/la-licorne-et-le-dragon/
^Israely, Jeff (5 June 2005),"A Resounding Eco",Time, archived fromthe original on 11 November 2012, retrieved1 June 2007,His new book touches on politics, but also on faith. Raised Catholic, Eco has long since left the church. 'Even though I'm still in love with that world, I stopped believing in God in my 20s after my doctoral studies on St. Thomas Aquinas. You could say he miraculously cured me of my faith,...'
^Liukkonen, Petri."Umberto Eco".Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland:Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived fromthe original on 4 August 2006.
^Farndale, Nigel (24 May 2005)."Heavyweight champion".The Daily Telegraph.Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved23 October 2009.
^Ferrario, Davide (7 September 2023),Umberto Eco: La biblioteca del mondo (Documentary), Giuseppe Cederna, Carlotta Eco, Emanuele Eco, Film Commission Torino-Piemonte, Ministero della Cultura (MiC), Rai Cinema,archived from the original on 10 August 2023, retrieved3 September 2023
Ur-Fascism,(subscription required) New York Review of Books, June, 22nd, 1995, pp. 12–15. Lecture, hold at Columbia University, New York, on April, 24th, 1995 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Europe from national socialism
