Books by Umberto Eco

In this collection of nine essays, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between 'open' and 'closed' texts, between a work of art that actively involves the 'addressee' in its production and one that holds the 'addressee' at bay and seeks to evoke a limited and predetermined response. He investigates the contributions of contemporary semantics to the study of narrative, and connects the modalities of textual interpretation with the problem of possible worlds.

Umberto Eco undertakes a series of idiosyncratic and typically brilliant explorations, starting from the perceived data of common sense, from which flow an abundance of 'stories' or fables, often with animals as protagonists, to expound a clear critique of Kant, Heidegger and Peirce.

The two great men, who stand on opposite sides of the church door, discuss some of the 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; and the other the world famous author of "The Name of the Rose", a scholar, philosopher and self-declared secularist.

Who is killing monks in a great medieval abbey famed for its library - and why? Brother William of Baskerville is sent to find out, taking with him the assistant who later tells the tale of his investigations. This story combines elements of detective fiction, metaphysical thriller, post-modernist puzzle and historical novel.

This book is significant for its 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 anticipation of two themes of literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interaction between reader and text.

An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Amid the carnage and confusion 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.

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.

... the greatest contribution to [semiotics] since the pioneering work of C. S. Peirce and Charles Morris."e; -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."e; -Language in Society... a major contribution to the field of semiotic studies."e; -Robert Scholes, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism... the most significant text on the subject published in the English language that I know of."e; -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.

Contains Candida Hofer's famously ascetic images of the Escorial in Spain, the Whitney Museum and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, Villa Medici in Rome and the Hamburg University Library, among others. Umberto Eco contributes an essay on libraries.

Embracing the web of multi-culturalism 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.

Roberto, a young nobleman, survives war, the Bastille, exile and shipwreck as he voyages to a Pacific island straddling the date meridian. There he waits now, alone on the mysteriously deserted Daphne, separated by treacherous reefs from the island beyond: the island of the day before.

In this exhilarating book, we accompany Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in with 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.