On Literature
by Umberto Eco
List Price:
Our Price: $4.84
You Save: $10.16 (68%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.18 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Umberto EcoTranslator: Martin McLaughlin
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-14
ISBN: 0156032392
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of On Literature
Book Review: Interesting but uneven
Summary: 4 Stars
Although I admire Eco's broad learning and his usual clarity of expression, I did not find this book as revealing as I had hoped. He does have a wonderful definition: "a work of literature is a miracle of invention." I had hoped to get a better understanding of semiotics from the book, since he is a semiotician. He never quite gives it to me, although he includes some insights. For example, in relation to the passage just quoted, he says: "semiotic inquiry is reduced to the discovery of the same constants in every text and thus loses sight of the inventions." On the next page, he adds that "semiotic discourse often fails to distinguish between 'manner' and 'style.'" He then summarizes Hegel's points that manner is "a repetitive obsession of the author" (Eco's words) while style is "the capacity [of a writer] constantly to outdo himself. And yet it is textual semiotics that is the only critique capable of bringing out such differences."
So what is semiotics? He never specifies, but he does say, "In the realm of style (as a way of giving form) belongs not only the use of language (or of colors, or of sounds, according to the semiotic systems or universes used) but also the way of deploying narrative structures, portraying characters, and articulating points of view." Later he observes that "if proper criticism is understanding and making others understand how a text is made, and if the review and the history of literature are unable to do this adequately, the only true form of criticism is a semiotic analysis of the text." Further, "a critical review cannot be exempt, except in cases of exceptional cowardice, from pronouncing a verdict on what the text says," but "textual criticism . . . is always semiotic even when it does not know it is, or even when it denies it is."
Now Webster defines semiotics as "a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals esp. with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics." Thus, I thought his essay "On Symbolism" would be helpful. It is to a degree, but though less obscure than Hayden White (for example), Eco is almost equally hard to pin down, intentionally I think. For example: "Sensitivity to the symbolic mode stems from having noticed that there is something in the text that has meaning and yet could easily not have been there, and one wonders why it is there." And: "A symbol is an epiphany with Magi whose origins and destination we do not know, nor whom they have come to adore."--a wonderful metaphor, but it is less than precise about what symbolism really is. A little more helpful, perhaps: "Today it is we who demand that poetry, and often fiction, supply us not just with the expression of emotions, or an account of actions, or morality, but also with symbolic flashes, pale ersatz elements of a truth we no longer seek in religion."
More helpful about deconstruction than symbol, he speaks of "today's deconstructionist heresy, which seems to assume that a divinity or malign subconscious made us talk always and only with a second meaning, and that everything we say is inessential because the essence of our discourse lies elsewhere, in a symbolic realm we are often unaware of. . . . [T]he symbolic diamond, . . . meant to flash in the dark and dazzle us at sudden but very rare moments, has become a neon strip that pervades the texture of every discourse. This is too much of a good thing." A bit further on, he says "the second heresy is to be found in the information world [including coded phrases], which seeks a secret meaning in every event and every expression. This is the curse of the contemporary writer." Since we are incapable of finding a real symbol, "we look for it even where it does not exist as a textual mode." This is hardly reassuring to anyone who feels obliged to identify and interpret what appear to be symbols in a text, although it gives useful hints.
There is much more, and the collection of essays is well worth reading if only for its bon mots and its fruitful ambiguities, but let me conclude with a pronouncement about philosophy, narrative, and truth: "Instead of going to look for truth in the philosophers of the past, much contemporary philosophy has gone to look for it in Proust or Kafka, Joyce or Mann." (I know this to be true from my own readings.) "Thus it is not so much that philosophers have given up pursuing the truth as that art and literature have also taken on that function."
Recommended for anyone interested in understanding literature and criticism who is not expecting every essay to be as insightful as some of them are.
Summary of On Literature
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.
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.
Essays Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Essays Books
Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writingsby Angela Carter
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1998-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.66
Price in other shops:
Minerva Louise (Picture Lions)by Janet Morgan Stoeke
Picture Lions; Published: 1989-09-21; Paperback; Book
White Dynamite and Curly Kiddby Bill Martin, John Archambault
Collins; Published: 1988-08; Hardcover; Book
max's christmasby rosemary wells
Dial; Published: 1986; Hardcover; Book
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Bookby Walker Percy
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1983-06-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $66.99
Shadow Lines: Educational Edition, with Critical Essays by A N Kaul, Suvir Kaul, Meenakshi Mukherjee & Rajesewari Sunder rajanby Amitav Ghosh
South Asia Books/Oxford Univ Press, India; Published: 1998-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.30
The Book of Other PeoplePenguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2008-01-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.91
Price in other shops:
Walden and Civil Disobedience (Penguin American Library)by Henry David Thoreau
Penguin Classics; Published: 1983-08-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.62
Price in other shops:
The Portable Machiavelliby Niccolo Machiavelli
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1979-01-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.35
Price in other shops:
Essays of E.B. Whiteby E. B. White
Joanna Cotler Books; Published: 1978-10-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $298.51
Similar Books and other products
How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (A Harvest Book)by Umberto Eco, Diane Sterling, William Weaver
Mariner Books; Published: 1995-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.13
Price in other shops:
Six Walks in the Fictional Woodsby Umberto Eco
Harvard University Press; Published: 1998-07-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.94
Price in other shops:
The Name of the Rose: including the Author's Postscriptby Umberto Eco
Harvest Books; Published: 1994-09-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops:
Foucault's Pendulumby Umberto Eco
Mariner Books; Published: 2007-03-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.93
Price in other shops:
History of BeautyRizzoli; Published: 2010-09-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.29
Price in other shops:
Serendipities: Language and Lunacyby Umberto Eco
Mariner Books; Published: 1999-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.60
Price in other shops:
Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognitionby Umberto Eco, Alastair McEwen
Mariner Books; Published: 2000-11-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.20
Price in other shops:
The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essayby Umberto Eco
Rizzoli; Published: 2009-11-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.38
Confessions of a Young Novelist (Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature)by Umberto Eco
Harvard University Press; Published: 2011-04-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.95
Price in other shops:
The Prague Cemeteryby Umberto Eco
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade; Published: 2011-11-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.49
Price in other shops: