Three book editors, jaded by reading far too many crackpot manuscripts on the mystic and the occult, are inspired by an extraordinary conspiracy story told to them by a strange colonel to have some fun. They start feeding random bits of information into a powerful computer capable of inventing connections between the entries, thinking they are ...
Set in Italy in the Middle Ages, this is not only a narrative of a murder investigation in a monastery in 1327, but also a chronicle of the 14th century religious wars, a history of monastic orders, and a compendium of heretical movements.
This classic account of aesthetics in medieval Europe, by one of the world's greatest critics, explores cathedral builders, eccentric artifact collections housed in church treasuries, the mystical poetry and music of St. Hildegard, and other marvels of medieval Christendom.
Templar historian Frale pens an explosive new history of the medieval world's most powerful military order, the Templars--and the momentous discovery that finally allows the full story to be told.
Baudolino is an 11th-century adventurer who is relating his story to a historian. The events of his extravagant life include his early precocity, his adoption by the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, his studies in Paris, his search for the Holy Grail, and his love for a woman who is half human and half unicorn. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.
A veteran of the Thirty Years War, Roberto della Griva is shipwrecked in the South Seas on a secret mission to the Antipodes. Roberto is saved by the appearance of an abandoned ship, the Daphne, which has enough stores to sustain him. The time aboard the Daphne affords Roberto opportunity to reflect. As he looks back on his loves and education, he ...
By the author of "The Name of the Rose", this collection of essays offers advice on a wide range of unusual subjects - how to recognize a porno film, how to take an intelligent holiday, how not to talk about football, how to protect oneself from widows - as well as discussing weightier matters of history, politics, economics, literature and ...
The time: 2000 to 2005, the years of neoconservatism, terrorism, the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the ascension of Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Umberto Eco's response is a provocative, passionate, and witty series of essays--which originally appeared in the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and L'Espresso- ...
To recall his memories, Yambo withdraws to the family home where he searches old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and diaries to relive the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, and Fred Astaire.
"What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving?" So begins Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today.
Eco displays in these essays the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. His range is wide, and his insights are acute, frequently ironic, and often downright funny. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
In this volume Umberto Eco unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the "linguistics of the lunatic", stories told by scholars, scientists, poets, fanatics, and ordinary people in order to make sense of the world. In a careful unravelling of the fabulous and the false, Eco shows us how serendipities - unanticipated truths - often spring ...
Three space explorers from America, Russia, and China take off from their respective countries, each hoping to be the first to land on Mars--but they all land at the same time. Full-color illustrations.
How we know that a cat is a cat is a nice philosophical poser, and has been since the time of Plato. Why we should all agree on calling the animal a cat is equally interesting, yet it throws up the problem that lies at the heart of all modern philosophy: how much do our perceptions of things depend on our cognitive ability, and how much on our ...
The aim of this book is to explore the theoretical possibility and the social function of a unified approach to every phenomenon of signification and/or communication.
Umberto Eco, international bestselling novelist and leading literary theorist, here brings together these two roles in a provocative discussion of the vexed question of literary interpretation. The limits of interpretation - what a text can actually be said to mean - are of double interest to a semiotician whose own novels' intriguing complexity ...
In these five essays, Umberto Eco considers the topics of modern warfare, multiculturalism, the media, atheism, and (drawing on his own Italian boyhood) fascism past and present.
Umberto Eco focuses here on what he once called 'the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation' - that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication. This important book by a major international intellectual figure begins with four theoretical essays ...
I would like to dedicate the book to those critics whom I have so summarily defined as apocalyptics. Without their unjust, biased, neurotic, desperate censure, I would never have elaborated three quarters of the ideas that I want to share here; without them, perhaps none of us would have realized that the question of mass culture is one in which ...
In this collection of essays and addresses delivered over the course of his illustrious career, Umberto Eco seeks "to understand the chemistry of [his] passion" for the word.
Acclaimed philosopher and author Umberto Eco explores mans fascination with evil, the grotesque, freakishness, and horror in art and literature. This provocative discussion explores in depth the concepts of evil, depravity, and darkness in art and literature.Rizzoli
The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture ...
Umberto Eco and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini approach religious issues such as abortion, the apocalypse, and ethics from two largely different positions. Martini is the Archbishop of Milan and a well-known New Testament scholar. Eco is the prolific Italian secularist, linguist, and philosopher--author of THE NAME OF THE ROSE. Their congenial ...
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