On Literature

Umberto Eco

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780156032391
• eBook ISBN: 9780547543048
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

A wide-ranging collection of essays on the importance and meaning of literature by "one of the most influential thinkers of our time" ( Los Angeles Times).
 
In this collection of essays and addresses delivered over the course of his long and celebrated career, Umberto Eco seeks "to understand the chemistry of [his] passion" for the word. From musings on Ptolemy and "the force of the false" to reflections on the experimental writing of Borges and Joyce, Eco's restless curiosity and encyclopedic knowledge are on dazzling display. On a more personal note, he also reveals his own ambitions and superstitions, his authorial anxieties and fears, letting readers into the private realms of his creative practice.
Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection exhibits the diversity of interests and originality of thought that have made Eco one of the world's literary giants.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Introduction
• On Some Functions of Literature
• A Reading of the Paradiso
• On the Style of The Communist Manifesto
• The Mists of the Valois
• Wilde: Paradox and Aphorism
• A Portrait of the Artist as Bachelor
• Between La Mancha and Babel
• Borges and My Anxiety of Influence
• On Camporesi: Blood, Body, Life
• On Symbolism
• On Style
• Les Semaphores sous la Pluie
• The Flaws in the Form
• Intertextual Irony and Levels of Reading
• The Poetics and Us
• The American Myth in Three Anti-American Generations
• The Power of Falsehood
• How I Write
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH
• Footnotes