Eco, Umberto [key], 1932–2016, Italian novelist, essayist, and semiotics scholar. His first novel, the best-selling Il nome della rosa (1980; tr. The Name of the Rose, 1983, film 1986), is a medieval murder mystery. A pastiche of detective fiction, medieval philosophy, and moral reflection, it encapsulates his semiotic theory, which describes how signs are produced and interpreted in the world. The novel presents clues for the reader to decode, but as the reader grapples with the novel's deeper meanings, the mystery becomes secondary. Eco's other novels, which also reflect his scholarly interests, include Il pendolo di Foucault (1988; tr. Foucault's Pendulum, 1989), L'isola del giorno prima (1994; tr. The Island of the Day Before, 1995), Baudolino (2000; tr. 2002), Il cimitero di Praga (2010; tr. The Prague Cemetery, 2011), and Numero Zero (2015; tr. 2015). A professor at the Univ. of Bologna, Eco also wrote more than 20 theoretical books, among them Trattato di semiotica generale (1975; tr. A Theory of Semiotics, 1976), The Role of the Reader (selected essays, tr. 1979), and I limiti dell'interpretazione (1990; tr. The Limits of Interpretation, 1990).
See studies by T. Coletti (1988) and M. T. Inge, ed. (1988).
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