In this paper, I would like to try to shed light on the passage Umberto Eco made from his philosophic-semiotic work to the literary one, which occurred in the nineteen eighties and continued, in an extremely significant parallel of the author’s intellectual parable, up until his death at the beginning of 2016. Indeed, we’ll see that the passage between different cultural domains, of which the “semiotics- novel” shift is but a particularly successful and fortunate step in Eco’s career, embodies the very essence of his thinking and intellectual legacy. Before it, other shifts had taken place, as hallmarks of a very personal research style with which Umberto Eco had literally revolutionised Italian culture. The shift from theory to narration will bring this paradigm, which was already very distinctive and characterising of Eco’s work, on the world stage, producing one last, influential assemblage. Then, in order to understand the meaning of this passage, which as we’ll see later is the core of Eco’s thinking and poetics, one must consider the state of Italian literature when Eco began writing, that is, in the mid-Fifties.
"Whereof One Cannot Theorize, Thereof One Must Narrate”
Claudio Paolucci
2017
Abstract
In this paper, I would like to try to shed light on the passage Umberto Eco made from his philosophic-semiotic work to the literary one, which occurred in the nineteen eighties and continued, in an extremely significant parallel of the author’s intellectual parable, up until his death at the beginning of 2016. Indeed, we’ll see that the passage between different cultural domains, of which the “semiotics- novel” shift is but a particularly successful and fortunate step in Eco’s career, embodies the very essence of his thinking and intellectual legacy. Before it, other shifts had taken place, as hallmarks of a very personal research style with which Umberto Eco had literally revolutionised Italian culture. The shift from theory to narration will bring this paradigm, which was already very distinctive and characterising of Eco’s work, on the world stage, producing one last, influential assemblage. Then, in order to understand the meaning of this passage, which as we’ll see later is the core of Eco’s thinking and poetics, one must consider the state of Italian literature when Eco began writing, that is, in the mid-Fifties.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
