The son of an ironmonger, he obtained a diploma at high school “Giovanni Plana “of Alexandria, his hometown. Among his classmates, accordionist Gianni Coscia, with whom he wrote the magazine shows. In his youth he was engaged in the GIAC (the then branch of Catholic Action youth) and in the early fifties was named among the national leaders of the student movement at the AC (progenitor of the MSAC). In 1954 he abandoned the position (as did Carlo Carretto and Mario Rossi) at odds with Luigi Gedda. [Citation needed] During his university studies of Thomas Aquinas, he stopped believing in God and definitively left the Catholic Church; in an ironic note, later he commented: “you can say that he (Thomas Aquinas) I have miraculously cured by faith.”
He graduated in philosophy in 1954 at ‘ University of Turin with Luigi Pareyson with a thesis on the aesthetics of St. Thomas Aquinas (examiner Augusto Guzzo), became interested in philosophy and medieval culture, the field of inquiry never abandoned (see the volume from the tree to the labyrinth) although later he studied semiotics of contemporary popular culture criticism and investigation on the literary and artistic experimentation. In 1956 he published his first book, an extension of his thesis entitled The aesthetic problem in St. Thomas.
In 1954 participated and won a competition for the RAI ‘recruitment of new officials and commentators. With Eco there also entered Furio Colombo and Gianni Vattimo. All three left the broadcaster by the end of the fifties. In the next competition they entered Emmanuele Milan, Fabiano Fabiani, Angelo Guglielmi, and many others. The winners of the first competitions were later labeled as “pirates” because they followed a training course directed by Pier Emilio Gennarini and should have, according to the intentions of the manager Filiberto Guala, “rejuvenate” the programs. With other subsequent input, including Gianni Serra, Emilio Garroni and Luigi Silori, the great friends really innovated the cultural environment of the television, still closely tied to personalities from EIAR, and was subsequently considered as the true promoters of the centrality of RAI in the Italian cultural system. working experience in RAI, including friendships with members of the Group 63 Eco drew inspiration for many writings, including the famous article in 1961 Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno.
Since 1959 1975 was co-director of the publishing house Bompiani publishing. In 1962 he published the Open Work wise, to the surprise of the same author, had considerable resonance at international level and gave the theoretical basis to Group 63, the literary avant-garde movement and Italian art.
in 1961 he began his academic career that led him to take courses as a lecturer in various Italian universities: Turin, Milan, Florence and finally, Bologna, where he obtained the chair of Semiotics in 1975, becoming professor. University of Bologna has been director of the Institute of Communication and spectacle of DAMS, then began the Degree in Communication Sciences. Finally he became Chairman of the Higher School of Humanities that coordinates the activities of Bologna doctorate of humanities. Over the years he has also taught in various foreign universities including UC-San Diego, New York University, Columbia University, Yale University, Collège de France, Ecole Normale Supérieure. In October 2007 he retired from teaching for reasons of age.
From the late ’50s, Eco became interested in the influence of the mass media in mass culture, on which he published articles in several newspapers and magazines, then mostly converged in Diary minimum (1963) and Apocalyptic and integrated (1964). Apocalyptic and integrated (which was a new edition in 1977) analyzed with sociological mass communications. [Citation needed] The subject was addressed in Diary minimum, which included among others the short article of 1961 Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno. On the same theme, held in 1967 in New York the seminar For a semiotic guerilla warfare, later published in The costume house (1973) and frequently cited in discussions of counterculture and resistance to media power. Also significant was its focus on the correlations between dictatorship and mass culture in The Eternal Fascism, Chapter Five of the wise moral writings, [9] where it identified the characteristics, recurring over time, the so-called “Eternal Fascism”, or “Ur- fascism “: the cult of tradition, rejection of modernism, the cult of action for action, the disagreement as betrayal, fear of differences, the appeal to the frustrated middle classes, the obsession with conspiracy, machismo, the “qualitative populism TV and Internet” and others; they and their combinations, according to Eco, you can also “expose” the forms of fascism that breed always “in every part of the world”. In an interview on 24 April 2010 brought out his vision compared to Wikipedia, which Eco himself as a “compulsive user,” and the world of open source.
in 1968 he published his first book of semiotic theory, the structure absent, which was followed by the fundamental theory of Semiotics (1975) and articles for the Encyclopedia Einaudi then gathered in Semiotics and the philosophy of language (1984). In 1971 he founded Versus – Papers semiotic studies, one of the leading international journals semiotics, remaining managing director and member of the Scientific Committee until his death. It was also secretary, vice president and since 1994 honorary president of the IASS / AIS ( “International Association for Semiotic Studies”). He was invited to give the prestigious conferences Tanner (University of Cambridge, 1990), Norton (Harvard University, 1993), Goggio (University of Toronto, 1998), Weidenfeld (Oxford University, 2002) and Richard Ellmann (Emory University, 2008).
he has worked since its founding in 1955, the weekly magazine L’espresso (on which from 1985 to 2016 held last page in the phone book the packet of Minerva, in which among other things said he personally contribute to Wikipedia), the newspaper the Day, La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, the poster and countless international specialized magazines, including Semiotics (founded in 1969 by Thomas Sebeok) , Poetics Today, Degrés, Structuralist Review, Text, Communications (Paris magazine of EHESS), Problems of information, Word & amp; Creative or literary magazines and cultural debate as Fifteen, Il Verri (founded by Luciano Anceschi), Alfabeta, The Trojan etc. He collaborated on the series “Making Europe” directed by Jacques Le Goff with the study The search for the perfect language in European culture (1993). He translated the Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau (in 1983) and Sylvie Gérard de Nerval (in 1999 both by Einaudi) and introduced the works of many writers and artists. He also collaborated with musicians Luciano Berio and Sylvano Bussotti. Its debates, often amused by the tone, with Luciano Nanni, Omar Calabrese, Paolo Fabbri, Ugo Volli, Francesco Leonetti, Nanni Balestrini, Guido Almansi, Achille Bonito Oliva or Maria Corti, just to name a few, have added contributions not written down in history Italian intellectuals, especially when touched usual arguments do not (or at least not be regarded as such before the Eco), such as the figure of James Bond, puzzles, physiognomy, the television series, the serial novel, the comic , the labyrinth, the lie, the secret societies, or more seriously the long-standing concepts of abduction, of fees and classic. [citation needed] a big fan of the comic Dylan Dog, Eco tribute was made to the 136 number through the character Humbert Coe , that he accompanied the nightmare investigator in an investigation on the origin of the world’s languages. He was also a friend of the painter and cartoonist Andrea Pazienza who was his pupil at the DAMS of Bologna, and wrote the preface to Hugo Pratt’s books, Charles Monroe Schulz, Jules Feiffer and Raymond Peynet. and “Heart” comic F. Bonzi and Alain Denis published on Linus with his presentation in 1975.
In 1980 Eco debuted in fiction. His first novel, The Name of the Rose, found a great success both with the critics that to the public, becoming an international best-seller translated into 47 languages and sold thirty million copies. The Name of the Rose was also a finalist for the prestigious Edgar Award in 1984. In 1988 he published his second novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, satire paranoid interpretation of the true facts or legendary history and conspiracy syndromes. This uncontrolled interpretation critique resumes in theoretical works on the reception (cfr. The Limits). later novels are The Island of the Day Before (1994), Baudolino (2000), The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004), The Prague Cemetery (2010) and Number Zero (2015), all published in Italian by Bompiani. In 2012 he published a revised version “” of his first novel The Name of the Rose, with a final note of the same Echo, keeping style and narrative structure, it intervened to eliminate repetitions and errors, to change the system of Latin quotations and the description of the librarian’s face to remove a neogothic reference.
in his novels, Eco tells true stories or legends that are based upon historical figures or fictional. Inserted in his works turned philosophical debates about the existence of the void, of God or the nature of the universe. Eco is attracted to themes rather mysterious and obscure (the Knights Templar, the Holy Grail, the sacred Shroud etc.). In his novels scientists and men who have made history they are often treated with indifference by his contemporaries. Humor is the favorite literary weapon by the writer of Alexandria. The various Latin quotations and countless links to works of various kinds, known almost exclusively of philologists and bibliophiles, make novels such as The Name of the Rose or The Island of the Day Before a flurry of historical notions, philosophical, artistic and mathematician. Central’s The Name of the Rose is the issue of rice. I Foucault’s Pendulum Eco covers issues like the search for the Holy Grail and the story of the Knights Templar, making numerous nods to the ancient and the modern age mysteries. Ne The Island of the Day Before the whole of mankind is symbolized by the shipwrecked Roberto della Griva, who seeks an island outside of time and space. In Baudolino creates a medieval character, without leaking or not the mendacious nature of the protagonist, who travels in search of an earthly paradise (the legendary kingdom of Prester John). In The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana he reflects on force and on the very essence of remembrance; in this case addressed to incidents that occurred in the twentieth century. The Prague Cemetery is focused on the nature of the plot and especially the history (especially ‘European’) of the Jewish people. His latest novel, number zero, taking up themes have always been dear to the author (the false, the construction of the plot and news) focuses on the recent Italian history, narrating real events, but reinterpreted through a complottistica key.
in 1971 he was among the 757 signatories of the letter open in L’Espresso about the case Pinelli and then the self-denunciation of solidarity to Lotta Continua, where fifty signatories expressed solidarity with the militants and directors responsible for the newspaper, investigated for incitement to murder. The signatories to the judiciary autodenunciavano saying to share the content of the article. Moreover, the severe criticism of Eco-terrorism and the various armed struggle projects are contained in a series of articles in the weekly magazine L’Espresso and La Repubblica [citation needed], especially at the time of the Moro case (articles then republished in the book Seven Years of desire). In fact the weapon that has characterized the political commitment of Eco has become the critical analysis of political speeches and mass communications. This commitment is summarized in the guerrilla metaphor semiotic which maintains that it is not so important to change the content of the messages to the source but try to animate their analysis beyond where they come (the formula was: no need to occupy the television, you have to occupy a chair in front of each TV set). In this sense, the semiotic guerilla warfare is a form of social criticism through education at the reception. Since 2002 takes part in the association’s Freedom and Justice activities, which is one of the most famous founders and sponsors, participating actively through its initiatives in the political-cultural debate Italian. His book A shrimp step (2006) contains critical to what he defines populism Berlusconi, the Bush policy, the so-called clash between ethnic groups and religions. In 2011, in the weeks of the Arab revolts, during a press conference recorded in the Book Fair in Jerusalem, unleashes his response to an Italian journalist political controversy that asks if share comparisons between Berlusconi and Mubarak, advanced by some: “The comparison could be made with Hitler himself came to power through free elections “; Eco himself, from the columns of L’Espresso, belie that statement clarifying the circumstances of his answer. Eco was part of the association Aspen Institute Italy.
(from Wikipedia)
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