The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Advances in Semiotics) [Paperback]

Umberto Eco (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 1979 | ISBN-10: 025320318X | ISBN-13: 978-0253203182

"... not merely interesting and novel, but also exceedingly provocative and heuristically fertile." —The Review of Metaphysics

"... essential reading for anyone interesting in... the new reader-centered forms of criticism." —Library Journal

In this erudite and imaginative book, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between 'open' and 'closed' texts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (July 22, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 025320318X
• ISBN-13: 978-0253203182
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #809,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Umberto Eco (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian novelist, medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, and literary critic.

He is the author of several bestselling novels, The Name of The Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of The Day Before, and Baudolino. His collections of essays include Five Moral Pieces, Kant and the Platypus, Serendipities, Travels In Hyperreality, and How To Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays.

He has also written academic texts and children's books.


Photography (c) Università Reggio Calabria

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another contribution to semiotics from the master, October 26, 2000

By 

Nessander - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Advances in Semiotics) (Paperback)

The Italian Umberto Eco is a literary critic, novelist, and semiotician (studying symbols and symbol systems).

His introductory work to this fascinating field is "Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language" which is easier to start with. In "Theory of Semiotics" he presents his views. In his novel "The Name of the Rose" (1980) he brings the study of semiotics to fiction.

In this book, Eco sets out to illustrate how the reader engages in constructing meaning when reading texts. Like Roland Barthes and others in the field of semiotics (which is the study of symbols in culture), Eco draws upon Ferdinand de Saussure (Course in General Linguistics) and Claude Levi-Strauss (Structural Anthropology). Yet Eco recognizes that meaning is not merely governed by structure, but also interactively constructed by the reader/interpreter, who often inserts or fills-in missing meaning to construct a coherent picture.

Readers interested in questions of meaning, the philosophy of language, signs and symbols will find this a fascinating work. Although the subject matter is challenging, Eco's style is clear - he is a masterful writer.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Role of the Reader, June 24, 2010

By 

Peter Rye Hansen "prh." (denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Advances in Semiotics) (Hardcover)

Eco's book is an important contribution in the part of semiotics, that explore how meaning is a product of the relation between reader and text. The most important issue is, that 'reader' as well as 'the way the text invite to be read', is already positions in the text. This is not new in the exploring of utterance, but the implications are still not only relevant but important. Eco's book is well-written and, in a didactic view, a proper way of introducing complex semiotic theory to students at university level.