Umberto Eco and the Open Text: Semiotics, Fiction, Popular Culture [Hardcover]

Peter Bondanella (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521442001 | ISBN-13: 978-0521442008 | Publication Date: April 13, 1997

Umberto Eco is known among academics for his literary and cultural theories, and to an enormous international audience through his novels The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Peter Bondanella offers the first comprehensive study in English of Eco's works. In clear and accessible language, he traces the development of Eco's interests, from medieval aesthetics to semiotics to popular culture, and shows how Eco's own fiction grows out of his literary and cultural theories. Bondanella also provides a full bibliography of works by and about Eco, arguably the most famous Italian writer since Dante.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Peter Bondanella's Umberto Eco and the Open Text, an extremely intelligent, well-researched monograph and the most lucid study on Umberto Eco to date, was certainly well worth the wait. Peter Bondanella's study of Umberto Eco is a invaluable guide for anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate one of the wittiest and most erudite, intelligent, and entertaining intellectuals of our time." Rocco Capozzi, World Literature Today

"Bondanella's book amounts to a masterful sketch of Italian and Western intellectual history from the early 1950's to the present." The Comparatist

Book Description

Umberto Eco is known among academics for his literary and cultural theories, and to an enormous international audience through his novel The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Peter Bondanella here offers the first comprehensive study in English of Eco's works. In clear and accessible language, he traces the development of Eco's interests, from medieval aesthetics to semiotics to popular culture, and shows how Eco's own fiction grows out of his literary and cultural theories. Bondanella also provides a full bibliography of works by and about Eco, arguably the most famous Italian writer since Dante.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 236 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (April 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521442001
• ISBN-13: 978-0521442008
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,416,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Until his retirement in 2007, Peter Bondanella was Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, Film Studies, and Italian at Indiana University. A member of the European Academy of Sciences and the Arts and past President of the American Association for Italian Studies, Bondanella has written numerous books and articles on Italian literature and cinema and has translated or edited a number of Italian literary classics (Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Cellini, Vasari). His latest works are A HISTORY OF ITALIAN CINEMA and NEW ESSAYS ON UMBERTO ECO (Eco is shown in the photo on the left with Bondanella on the right). Bondanella now lives in Utah's desert country (St. George, UT) with his two Italian greyhounds Dante and Gianluca and his wife Julia.