Umberto Eco - författare, semiolog, tänkare

Abstract

A summary: In this article Sven Ekblad gives a portrait of the eminent Italian weiter, semiotician and thinker Umberto Eco. He approaches his subject from three different angles. Firstly, it describes Eco's academic career: his undergraduate studies at the University of Turin, his appointment to the chair of Semiotics at the University of Bologna in 1975, a post he still holds today, and his international success as a lecturer. A general discussion of semiotics is exemplified by his fiction and his academic work. Secondly, the article deals with Eco's role as a cultural commentator, on TV and in journals and newspapers, on a wide range of popular and intellectual subjects. Thirdly Ekblad focuses on Eco as a writer of books on aesthetics, semiotics, literary criticism, pedagogics and essay writing, as an author of children's books and, in particular, as a writer of novels whose reputation has spread all over the world. The best known title, The Name of the Rose, has been translated into 25 different languages. Finally, an effort is made to characterize Umberto Eco the man, his likes and dislikes, his life as an academic, his favorite thinkers, his fascination with opposites and his agnostic view of the world.