The Island of the Day Before"A profound and ingenious story artfully told . . . Renaissance battles, love poems, and sea journeys in the age of exploration." --The New York Times Book Review Roberto della Griva is an Italian nobleman living in 1643. His mission is to travel the South Pacific and discover the means by which navigators can understand the mystery of longitude. After a violent storm, however, Roberto finds himself shipwrecked--on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, but the crew is missing. As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father; and the lessons given him on fencing, blasphemy, and the writing of love letters. The Island of the Day Before is a fascinating, lyrical tale about a young dreamer's search for love and meaning. "A masterpiece . . . intellectually stimulating and dramatically intriguing." --Chicago Tribune "A story both thought provoking and surprisingly humorous." – USA Today "Umberto Eco . . . is the last of the great 20th century polymathic fabulists in the tradition of Joyce and Nabokov and Borges." – The Wall Street Journal UMBERTO ECO is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna and the bestselling author of numerous novels and collections of essays. He lives in Milan. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver |
Contents
Daphne | 1 |
An Account of Events in the Monferrato | 20 |
The Serraglio of Wonders | 36 |
Fortification Displayd | 45 |
The Labyrinth of the World | 52 |
The Great Art of Light and Shadow | 63 |
Pavane Lachryme | 70 |
The Curious Learning of the Wits of the Day | 77 |
The Orange Dove | 271 |
Divers and Artificious Machines | 281 |
Dialogues of the Maximum Systems | 297 |
Technica Curiosa | 325 |
Delights for the Ingenious A Collection of Emblems | 341 |
The Secrets of the Flux and Reflux of the Sea | 357 |
Of the Origin of Novels | 365 |
The Soul of Ferrante | 370 |
The Aristotelian Telescope | 86 |
Geography and Hydrography Reformed | 98 |
The Art of Prudence | 108 |
The Passions of the Soul | 114 |
The Map of Tenderness | 126 |
A Treatise on the Science of Arms | 131 |
Horologium Oscillatorium | 147 |
Discourse on the Powder of Sympathy | 153 |
Longitudinum Optata Scientia | 177 |
Unheardof Curiosities | 198 |
A New Voyage Round the World | 204 |
Wit and the Art of Ingenuity | 228 |
Telluris Theoria Sacra | 242 |
Anatomy of Erotic Melancholy | 386 |
A Breviary for Politicals | 394 |
A Garden of Delights | 407 |
Mundus Subterraneus | 412 |
Monologue on the Plurality of Worlds | 423 |
Joyfull Newes out of the Newfound Worlde | 437 |
The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying | 449 |
Paradoxical Exercises Regarding the Thinking of Stones | 469 |
An Enquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell | 483 |
Itinerarium Extaticum Coeleste | 496 |
Colophon | 505 |
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Common terms and phrases
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