The Limits of Interpretation"Eco's essays read like letters from a friend, trying to share something he loves with someone he likes. . . . Read this brilliant, enjoyable, and possibly revolutionary book." --George J. Leonard, San Francisco Review of Books " . . . a wealth of insight and instruction." --J. O. Tate, National Review "If anyone can make [semiotics] clear, it's Professor Eco. . . . Professor Eco's theme deserves respect; language should be used to communicate more easily without literary border guards." --The New York Times "The limits of interpretation mark the limits of our world. Umberto Eco's new collection of essays touches deftly on such matters." --Times Literary Supplement "It is a careful and challenging collection of essays that broach topics rarely considered with any seriousness by literary theorists." --Diacritics Umberto Eco focuses here on what he once called "the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation"--that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - KirkLowery - LibraryThingThis book is a collection of 15 essays grouped around the subject: "Is there any limitation to how a reader may interpret a text?" Eco's answer is "yes." If nothing else, one may find -- not always ... Read full review
The limits of interpretation
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictPrimarily for specialists, this book by the best-selling author of In the Name of the Rose (who practiced semiotics long before fiction) is also largely theoretical, even though bolstered by ... Read full review
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Two Models of Interpretation | 8 |
Pragmaticism vs Pragmatism | 23 |
The State of the Art | 44 |
Small Worlds | 64 |
Interpreting Serials | 83 |
Interpreting Drama | 101 |
Interpreting Animals lll | 111 |
Abduction in Uqbar | 152 |
Pirandello Ridens | 163 |
Fakes and Forgeries | 174 |
Semantics Pragmatics and Text Semiotics | 203 |
Presuppositions | 222 |
A Fiction | 263 |
283 | |
292 | |