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 | 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 | |