On Literature

Name: On Literature
Rating: 3 (1 reviews)
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780099453949

by Unknown Author

3.0

(1 ratings)

352 pages2006Penguin Random HouseISBN 9780099453949

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About this book

After the opening essay on the general significance of literature, Eco examines a number of major authors from the Western canon. A stimulating chapter on the poetic qualities of Dantes Paradiso is followed by one on the style of the Communist Manifesto. The next three essays centre on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature: one on the French writer Nervals masterpiece, Sylvie (a major influence on Eco and a novella that he translated into Italian), one on Oscar Wildes love of paradox, and one on Joyces views on language. The last three pieces deal with the road that leads from Cervantes via Swift to Borges Library of Babel, then an essay on Ecos own anxiety about Borges influence on him, and the volume ends with an article on the enigmatic Italian critic and anthropologist Piero Camporesi. ON LITERATURE is a provocative and entertaining collection of sprightly essays on the key texts that have shaped Eco the novelist and critic. This volume will appeal to anyone interested in how new light is shed on old masters by a great contemporary mind.

Publication Details

Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 2006
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780099453949
Language: en

About Unknown Author

Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. He is widely known for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, topped the bestseller charts in Italy. Eco also wrote academic texts, children's books, and essays, and edited and translated into Italian books from French, such as Raymond Queneau’s “Exercises in Style” (1983). He was the founder of the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Republic of San Marino,[3] president of the Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities at the University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei, and an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford.