Introduction : Umberto Eco’s interpretative semiotics : interpretation, encyclopedia, translation

Abstract

This volume is an anthology of selected papers on Umberto Eco’s theory of semiotics. The essays in this collection seek to bring to a broader and variegated readership a discussion of Eco’s work as it pertains to broad spheres of human activity. In particular, these essays focus on the act of interpretation, on the formation of culture as a matrix of thought, on the perceptible and imperceptible acts of translation, and on the regulative theoretical hypothesis of the encyclopedia. These essays address highly cogent issues in semiotic and cultural studies and reflect the debate which begun in Bologna in the 1990s between Eco and some of his researchers and students, but which has not had sufficient impact abroad because of limited circulation outside national boundaries and the Italian language.