Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (January 5, 1932 in Alessandria, Piemonte) is an Italian writer and professor for middle age history in Bologna.
Eco was born in 1932 in Northern Italy. After his school time he studied philosophy, history, literature and educational sciences. He finished his studies with a doctoral thesis about Thomas Aquinas in 1954. In 1962 he married.
His career as writer began with The Name of the Rose in 1980.
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Biography [change]
Eco was born in the 5th January of 1932 in the place of Alessandria in a family that had 13 sons, he studied philosophy and humanities in the University of Turin, where became a PhD. He has worked as professor in different centres having prestige and from the year 1971 occupies the chair of semiotics in the University of Bologna. The research of the world of the higher education does that he is a doctor honoris causa of thirty institutions.
He had been named satrap of the pataphysics for his humoristic works among which How to travel with a Salmon is important, and for having perfected one of its areas, the cacopedia.
Other qualities come him to be member of the Council of Sages of the UNESCO. Received in the year 2000 the Prize Prince of Asturias of Communication and Humanities.
Has worked also in the mass media and make culture popular. His objects of interest have a centre in the Middle Ages, the languages and the classical. As is strange, he is also an expert at James Bond.
More famous works [change]
Novels [change]
- Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose, 1980) - Historical novel that had been changed to be proper for the cinema and became a supervendes (?). It combines the elements of intrigue (i.e. a plot) with the knowledge in Middle Ages and make this epoch to be near to the present.
- Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum, 1988) - Work that shows as three workers of a publishing house are trapped in their own fiction.
- L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the day before, 1994) - A nobleman from the 17th century finds himself trapped in a yacht in one huso timetable and wonders on passing of the time.
- Baudolino (2000) - Novel that explain the experiences of a young peasant taken as one's own child by an emperor, formed into a structure in a way similar to the picaresque novel (novel that takes a dishonest person or criminal for its central character, telling his or her story in episodic form).
- La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana (The Mysterious Flame of the Queen Loana, 2004) - A man who loses his memory tries recover it, considering the times of the author's youth.
Other works [change]
- Opera Aperta
- Minimal Diary
- Kant and the Ornithorhynchus
- Semiotics and philosophy of the language
- The firm
- Art and Beauty in the Medieval Aesthetic
- The Limits of Interpretation
- Six Walks for the Narrative Forests
- Lector in fabula
- Apocalyptics and Integrates
- On Literature
- Searching the Perfect Language
- History of Beauty
- On Ugliness
(The English translations of titles require checking)
Other websites [change]
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