Works by
Umberto Eco
(Writer)
[1932 - ]

Fiction

Children's Books (with Eugenio Carmi, Illustrator)

• The Bomb and the General (1966), Eugenio Carmi, Illustrator
  A bad general who wishes to start a war with atom bombs is foiled and reduced to the humiliating status of doorman, an occupation in which he can use his uniform with all the braid.

• The Three Astronauts (1966), William Weaver, Translator
  A Martian's concern for a frightened bird shows three space explorers from America, Russia, and China that just because two creatures look different doesn't mean they have to be enemies.

Novels

• The Name of the Rose (1983)
  Who is killing monks in a great medieval abbey famed for its library - and why? Brother William of Baskerville is sent to find out, taking with him the assistant who later tells the tale of his investigations. Eco's celebrated story combines elements of detective fiction, metaphysical thriller, post-modernist puzzle and historical novel in one of the few twentieth-century books which can be described as genuinely unique.
  
  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.
  
  Movie (1986), Jean-Jacques Annaud, director with Christian Slater and Sean Connery  DVD  VHS

• Foucault's Pendulum (1989)
  Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth.
  
  Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.

• The Island of the Day Before (1995)
  Set in the 17th century, Eco's third novel tells the story of Roberto, a young nobleman.
  
  He survives war, the Bastille and shipwreck, and meets a variety of fantastical people, animals and machines as he voyages to a Pacific island straddling the date meridian.

• Baudolino (2002), William Weaver, Translator
  An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, dazzling, beguiling tale of history, myth and invention. It is 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned by the knights of the fourth Crusade.
  
  Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.
  
  It is 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned by the knights of the fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fatastical story.

• The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2005), Geoffrey Brock, Translator
  Yambo, a sixty-ish rare book dealer who lives in Milan has suffered a loss of memory; not the kind of memory neurologists call 'semantic' (Yambo remembers all about Julius Caesar and can recite every poem he has ever read), but rather his 'autobiographical' memory: he no longer knows his own name, doesn't tecognize his wife or his daughters, doesn't remember anything about his parents or his childhood.
  
  His wife, who is at his side as he slowly begins to recover, convinces him to return to his family home in the hills somewhere between Milan and Turin. Yambo promptly retreats to the sprawling attic, cluttered with boxes of newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and adolescent diaries.
  
  There, he relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Cyrano de Bergerac.
  
  As he recovers his memory, two voids remain shrouded in fog: a terrible event he experienced during the resistance, and the vague image of a girl whom he loved at sixteen, then lost. But a relapse occurs.
  
  Now in a coma, his memories run wild, and life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to find at last the face of the girl he loves: she descends the stairs of their high school and morphs into a Dante-esque promise (or threat) of the afterlife, as he struggles harder to capture her simple, innocent, real-life image - the schoolgirl he never forgot.
  
  Copiously illustrated throughout with images from comics, book jackets, record sleeves and other printed ephemera, The Mysterious Flame is a fascinating and hugely entertaining new novel from the incomparable Umberto Eco.

• The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Pierce (1984) with Thomas A. Sebeok, ed.

• Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (1985)
  In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. Juxtaposing theology and science, poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture.

• Meaning and Mental Representation (1988) by Marco Santambrogio and Umberto Eco with Patrizia Violi, ed.

• The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (1988), Hugh Bredin, Translator
  The well-known Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco discloses for the first time to English-speaking readers the unsuspected richness, breadth, complexity, and originality of the aesthetic theories advanced by the influential medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas, heretofore known principally as a scholastic theologian. Inheriting his basic ideas and conceptions of art and beauty from the classical world, Aquinas transformed or modified these ideas in the light of Christian theology and of developments in metaphysics and optics during the thirteenth century.
  
  Setting the stage with an account of the vivid aesthetic and artistic sensibility that flourished in medieval times, Eco examines Aquinas's conception of transcendental beauty, his theory of aesthetic perception or visio, and his account of the three conditions of beauty--integrity, proportion, and clarity--that, centuries later, emerged again in the writings of the young James Joyce. He examines the concrete application of these theories in Aquinas's reflections on God, mankind, music, poetry, and scripture. He discusses Aquinas's views on art and compares his poetics with Dante's. In a final chapter added to the second Italian edition, Eco examines how Aquinas's aesthetics came to be absorbed and superseded in late medieval times and draws instructive parallels between Thomistic methodology and contemporary structuralism. As the only book-length treatment of Aquinas's aesthetics available in English, this volume should interest philosophers, medievalists, historians, critics, and anyone involved in poetics, aesthetics, or the history of ideas.

• The Open Work (1989), Anna Cancogni, Translator
  More than twenty years after its original appearance in Italian, The Open Work remains significant for its powerful concept of "openness"--the artist's decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance--and for its striking anticipation of two major themes of contemporary literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interactive process between reader and text. The questions Umberto Eco raises, and the answers he suggests, are intertwined in the continuing debate on literature, art, and culture in general.
  
  This entirely new edition, edited for the English-language audience with the approval of Eco himself, includes an authoritative introduction by David Robey that explores Eco's thought at the period of The Open Work, prior to his absorption in semiotics. The book now contains key essays on Eco's mentor Luigi Pareyson, on television and mass culture, and on the politics of art. Harvard University Press will publish separately and simultaneously the extended study of James Joyce that was originally part of The Open Work, entitled The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce. The Open Work explores a set of issues in aesthetics that remain central to critical theory, and does so in a characteristically vivid style. Eco's convincing manner of presenting ideas and his instinct for the lively example are threaded compellingly throughout. This book is at once a major treatise in modern aesthetics and an excellent introduction to Eco's thought.

• Misreadings (1993), William Weaver, Translator
  Satirical essays in which Eco pokes fun at the over sophisticated, the over academic, and the over intellectual and makes penetrating comments about our modern mass culture and the elitist avant-garde.

• Apocalypse Postponed (1994), Robert Lumley, ed.

• The Middle Ages of James Joyce (1989)
  Also known as The Aesthetics of Chaosmos.

• Travels in Hyperreality (1986), William Weaver, Translator
  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.  Also known as Faith in Fakes.

• A Theory of Semiotics (1976)

• The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979)

• Postscript to the Name of the Rose (1984)

• Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)

• The Limits of Interpretation (1990)

• How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (1995, William Weaver, Translator
  Author takes on computer jargon, librarians, bureaucrats, meals on airplanes, bad coffee, taxi drivers, 33-function watches, soccer fans, and more.

• Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992) with C. Brooke-Rose, J. Culler, and R. Rorty; S.Collini, ed.
  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 has provoked his readers into intense speculation as to their meaning. Eco's illuminating and frequently hilarious discussion ranges from Dante to The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, to Chomsky and Derrida, and bears all the hallmarks of his inimitable personal style. Three of the world's leading figures in philosophy, literary theory and criticism take up the challenge of entering into debate with Eco on the question of interpretation. Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler and Christine Brooke-Rose each add a distinctive perspective on this contentious topic, contributing to a unique exchange of ideas among some of the foremost and most exciting theorists in the field.

• The Search for the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe) (1995)
  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 and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History. The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

• Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994)
  In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.

• Incontro - Encounter - Rencontre (1996)
  "It is impossible to think about the present or the future of universities without taking into account the fact that universities live in a world dominated by mass media." U. Eco. Eco wrote this short essay when he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in letters by Laurentian University (Canada). The essay appears in English, French, Italian.

• Belief or Nonbelief?: A Dialogue (2000) with Cardinal Martini

• Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition (1999), Alastair McEwen, Translator
  How do we know a cat is a cat? And why do we call it a cat? How much of our perception of things is based on cognitive ability, and how much on linguistic resources? Here, in six remarkable essays, Umberto Eco explores in depth questions of reality, perception, and experience. Basing his ideas on common sense, Eco shares a vast wealth of literary and historical knowledge, touching on issues that affect us every day. At once philosophical and amusing, Kant and the Platypus is a tour of the world of our senses, told by a master of knowing what is real and what is not.

• Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (1998)
  Serendipities is a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, a brilliant exposition of how unanticipated truths often spring from false ideas. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Umberto Eco offers a dazzling tour of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange to make sense of the world. Uncovering layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, Eco offers with wit and clarity such instances as Columbus's voyage to the New World, the fictions that grew around the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar, and the linguistic endeavors to recreate the language of Babel, to show how serendipities can evolve out of mistakes. With erudition, anecdotes, and scholarly rigor, this new collection of essays is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas.

• Conversations About the End of Time (2000) Cathernie David, Frederic Lenoir, Jean-Philippe De Tonnac, eds.
  A mind-expanding discussion of millenarianism by four brilliant thinkers.
  
  There is nothing special about the year 2000, yet the start of the third millennium proved a focus for many deep anxieties and expectations. Four of the world's boldest and most celebrated thinkers offer a vast range of insights into how we make sense of time: paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould on dating the Creation, evolutionary "deep time," and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale; Umberto Eco, novelist, medievalist, and Web fanatic, on the brave new world of cyberspace and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity, and access to knowledge; screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière on "the art of slowness" and attitudes toward time in non-Western cultures; and Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse. 
  
  Includes works by Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere, Jean Delumeau,

• Experiences in Translation (2000), Alastair McEwen, Translator

• Five Moral Pieces (2002)
  Embracing the web of multiculturalism that has become a fact of contemporary life from New York to New Delhi, Eco argues that we are more connected to people of other traditions and customs than ever before, making tolerance the ultimate value in today's world. What good does war do in a world where the flow of goods, services, and information is unstoppable and the enemy is always behind the lines?
  
  In the most personal of the essays, Eco recalls experiencing liberation from fascism in Italy as a boy, and examines the various historical forms of fascism, always with an eye toward such ugly manifestations today. And finally, in an intensely personal open letter to an Italian cardinal, Eco reflects on a question underlying all the reflections in the book--what does it mean to be moral or ethical when one doesn't believe in God?

• Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation (2003)
  Based on a series of lectures on translation these essays are thought-provoking and compelling discussions on the difficulties of translating faithfully. Using examples from classic literary texts including his own bestselling novels Eco examines the rights and wrongs, the misunderstandings and the 'negotiations' needed in order to translate. He examines various problems in translation with great wit and humor. Pointing out the pitfalls of literal translation, he asks a machine to translate the beginning of the Bible into Spanish then back into English, then into German and then again back into English. The result is very funny but as Eco points out, it is still vaguely recognizable as a version of the Bible and obviously not the first adventure of Harry Potter. He discusses every form of interpretation and expression from poetry to film and music always demonstrating with vivid examples the disastrous but often hilarious outcome of mistranslation. The main point of all these essays is that translation is always a matter of negotiation; whether it be a loss or a gain on either side a translator's job is to decide what elements are vital and which may be neglected.

• History of Beauty (2004), Alastair McEwen, Translator
  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 Umberto 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. While closely examining the development of the visual arts and drawing on works of literature from each era, Eco broadens his enquiries to consider a range of concepts, including the idea of love, the unattainable woman, natural inspiration versus numeric formulas, and the continuing importance of ugliness, cruelty, and even the demonic.
  
  Professor Eco takes us from classical antiquity to the present day, dispelling many preconceptions along the way and concluding that the relevance of his research is urgent because we live in an age of great reverence for beauty, "an orgy of tolerance, the total syncretism and the absolute and unstoppable polytheism of Beauty."
  
  In this, his first illustrated book, Professor Eco offers a layered approach that includes a running narrative, abundant examples of painting and sculpture, and excerpts from writers and philosophers of each age, plus comparative tables. A true road map to the idea of beauty for any reader who wishes to journey into this wonderful realm with Eco's nimble mind as guide.

• On Literature (2004)
  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. From musings on Ptolemy and "the force of the false" to reflections on the experimental writing of Borges and Joyce, Eco's luminous intelligence and encyclopedic knowledge are on dazzling display throughout. And when he reveals his own ambitions and superstitions, his authorial anxieties and fears, one feels like a secret sharer in the garden of literature to which he so often alludes.
  
  Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that have made Eco one of the world's leading writers.

• On Ugliness (2007), Alastair McEwen, Translator

• Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism (2007)
  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—that leaves no slogan unexamined, no innovation unexposed. What led us into this age of hot wars and media populism, and how was it sold to us as progress? Eco discusses such topics as racism, mythology, the European Union, rhetoric, the Middle East, technology, September 11, medieval Latin, television ads, globalization, Harry Potter, anti-Semitism, logic, the Tower of Babel, intelligent design, Italian street demonstrations, fundamentalism, The Da Vinci Code, and magic and magical thinking.
  
  The famous author and respected scholar shows his practical, engaged side: an intellectual involved in events both local and global, a man concerned about taste, politics, education, ethics, and where our troubled world is headed.

• Charles M. Schulz: 40 Years Life and Art (1990) by Giovanni Trimboli with Umberto Eco

• The Key to The Name of the Rose (1999) by Adele J. Haft, Jane G. White, and Robert J. White
  Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is a brilliant mystery set in a fictitious medieval monastery. The text is rich with literary, historical, and theoretical references that make it eminently re-readable. The Key makes each reading fuller and more meaningful by helping the interested reader not merely to read but also to understand Eco's masterful work. Inspired by pleas from friends and strangers, the authors, each trained in Classics, undertook to translate and explain the Latin phrases that pepper the story. They have produced an approachable, informative guide to the book and its setting--the middle ages. The Key includes an introduction to the book, the middle ages, Umberto Eco, and philosophical and literary theories; a useful chronology; and reference notes to historical people and events.

• Story of Time (1999) by E. H. Gombrich, Kristen Lippincott, and Umberto Eco
  Concerned with the very subject that gives the Millennium its meaning-time--"The Story of Time" is one of the most important, high-profile books published to mark this momentous occasion. Multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural in its subject matter and approach, and all encompassing in its scope, the book features an outstanding international cast of authors, including Umberto Eco and Sir Ernst Gombrich-every one a world-renowned expert from the fields of science, art, history, philosophy and culture. Challenging yet accessible, "The Story of Time" is lavishly illustrated in color, depicting over 250 important and famous artifacts, from Ancient Egyptian calendars and medieval scenes of The Apocalypse to the distorted clock paintings of Dali and recent photographs of the universe taken from the Hubble telescope.

• Cult Of Vespa (2001)
  Here is the entertaining history about the most successful 'cult-scooter' Vespa in its 50th anniversary. Not many products reach the goal of a fifty-year-life-span. The 50 years of Vespa are even more striking if one considers the condition and the period in which it came to existence. Many post-war inventions were forgotten when income rose and life standard improved. But Vespa instead, developed from a utility vehicle, into an international success, a 'cult-object', which has given rise to the creation of associations and collector's guilds world-wide.
  
  Includes work by Alessandro Baricco, Antonio Tabucchi, Francesca Picchi, Francesco Alberoni, Francois Burkhardt, Gilberto Filippetti, Lina Wertmuller, Marino Livolsi, Maurizio Bettini, Omar Calabrese, Sebastiano Vassalli, Tommaso Fanfani, and Umberto Eco

• Umberto Eco and Football (2001) by Peter Trifonas
  Umberto Eco's work--whether analyzing the psychological sources of our fascinations with sports celebrity or presenting serendipitous misreadings of great books dares to go where no theory has gone before--to the very turf of everyday life.