Advances in Semiotics

"[READING ECO is a timely indication] of the fruitfulness of perceiving Eco as the same in his metamorphoses. [It also testifies] to a certain price that Eco and his readers must/may pay for the enormous pleasure and intellectual stimulus of being Eco and being with Eco." -The Comparatist Umberto Eco is, quite simply, a genius. He is a renowned medievalist, philosopher, novelist, a popular journalist, and linguist. He is as warm and witty as he is learned-and quite probably the best-known academic and novelist in the world today. The goal of this anthology is to examine his ideas of literary semiotics and interpretation as evidenced both in his scholarly work and in his fiction.

Existential semiotics involves an a priori state of signs and their fixation into objective entities. These essays define this new philosophical field.

"This is the most systematic discussion of semiotics yet published." -Choice "A bravura performance." -Thomas Sebeok "Nöth's handbook is an outstanding encyclopedia that provides first-rate information on many facets of sign-related studies, research results, and applications." -Social Sciences in General

" . . . the greatest contribution to [semiotics] since the pioneering work of C. S. Peirce and Charles Morris." -Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism " . . . draws on philosophy, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and aesthetics and refers to a wide range of scholarship . . . raises many fascinating questions." -Language in Society " . . . a major contribution to the field of semiotic studies." -Robert Scholes, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism " . . . the most significant text on the subject published in the English language that I know of." -Arthur Asa Berger, Journal of Communication Eco's treatment demonstrates his mastery of the field of semiotics. It focuses on the twin problems of the doctrine of signs-communication and signification-and offers a highly original theory of sign production, including a carefully wrought typology of signs and modes of production.