Misplaced Pages

#442557

68-742: In 1897 Meillet completed his doctorate, Research on the Use of the Genitive-Accusative in Old Slavonic . In 1902 he took a chair in Armenian at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales and took under his wing Hrachia Adjarian , who would become the founder of modern Armenian dialectology . In 1905 Meillet was elected to the Collège de France , where he taught on

136-466: A Benedictine novice , investigates a series of murders at a monastery that is to host an important religious debate. The novel contains many direct or indirect metatextual references to other sources which require the detective work of the reader to "solve". The title is unexplained in the body of the book, but at the end, there is a Latin verse " Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus "  [ it ; la ] ( transl.  "about

204-563: A Milan newspaper, it offers a satire of Italy's kickback and bribery culture as well as, among many things, the legacy of fascism . A group of avant-garde artists, painters, musicians and writers, whom he had befriended at RAI, the Neoavanguardia or Gruppo '63, became an important and influential component in Eco's writing career. In 1971, Eco co-founded Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici (known as VS among Italian academics),

272-972: A building dedicated entirely to research, with access to a full range of support functions: assistance in preparing research proposals and grant applications, organizing scientific events, looking for partnerships and funding, publication support, internal funding, and communication. Local units: Joint research units ( UMR ): From 1914 to 1969, presidents were called administrators. Inalco conducts research projects in more than one hundred countries and offers joint programs with foreign universities. This enables Inalco students and their international counterparts to enhance their studies through immersive experiences. Inalco also provides distance learning courses through videoconferencing and online resources, offering instruction in Arabic , Armenian , Burmese , Estonian , Modern Hebrew , Inuktitut , Lithuanian , Malagasy , Quechua , Sinhalese , Slovak , and Swahili . Inalco

340-463: A conspiracy theory. Their conspiracy, which they call "The Plan", is about an immense and intricate plot to take over the world by a secret order descended from the Knights Templar . As the game goes on, the three slowly become obsessed with the details of this plan. The game turns dangerous when outsiders learn of The Plan and believe that the men have really discovered the secret to regaining

408-450: A critical analysis of a popular but unrefined quiz show host, appeared as part of a series of articles by Eco on mass media published in the magazine of the tyre manufacturer Pirelli . In it, Eco, observed that "[Bongiorno] does not provoke inferiority complexes, despite presenting himself as an idol, and the public acknowledge him, by being grateful to him and loving him. He represents an ideal that nobody need strive to reach because everyone

476-536: A foreign language, advanced international studies, and Natural Language Processing. The Institute offers initial training at Bachelor's, Master's and PhD levels, as well as continuing education open to external students and professionals. Foreign students can take French as a foreign language courses. Short, à la carte courses, evening classes and “practical certificates” are also popular. Compared to other French universities, many Bachelor programs at INALCO show high failure rates, i.e. high proportions of students failing

544-464: A meeting with Alexander Genis . Beginning in the early 1990s, Eco collaborated with artists and philosophers such as Enrico Baj , Jean Baudrillard , and Donald Kuspit to publish a number of tongue-in-cheek texts on the imaginary science of 'pataphysics . Eco's fiction has enjoyed a wide audience around the world, with many translations. His novels are full of subtle, often multilingual, references to literature and history. Eco's work illustrates

612-554: A passion for the Middle Ages and for semiotics, and a very modern pleasure." Gilles Deleuze cites Eco's 1962 book The Open Work approvingly in his seminal 1968 text Difference and Repetition , a book which poststructuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida is said to have also taken inspiration from. In an obituary by the philosopher and literary critic Carlin Romano, meanwhile, Eco is described as having "[become], over time,

680-465: A rose that used to exist, all we can learn is its empty name" ). The rose serves as an example of the destiny of all remarkable things. There is a tribute to Jorge Luis Borges , a major influence on Eco, in the character Jorge of Burgos: Borges, like the blind monk Jorge, lived a celibate life consecrated to his passion for books, and also went blind in later life. The labyrinthine library in The Name of

748-587: A scholarly monograph building on his work on Aquinas. Earning his libera docenza in aesthetics in 1961, Eco was promoted to the position of lecturer in the same subject in 1963, before leaving the University of Turin to take a position as lecturer in Architecture at the University of Milan in 1964. Among his work for a general audience, in 1961 Eco's short essay "Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno ",

SECTION 10

#1732765960443

816-703: A seminar in Timbuktu was followed up with another gathering in Bologna to reflect on the conditions of reciprocal knowledge between East and West. This, in turn, gave rise to a series of conferences in Brussels , Paris and Goa , culminating in Beijing in 2007. The topics of the Beijing conference were "Order and Disorder", "New Concepts of War and Peace", "Human Rights" and "Social Justice and Harmony". Eco presented

884-681: A semiotic journal. VS is used by scholars whose work is related to signs and signification. The journal's foundation and activities have contributed to semiotics as an academic field in its own right, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. Most of the well-known European semioticians, including Eco, A. J. Greimas , Jean-Marie Floch, and Jacques Fontanille , as well as philosophers and linguists like John Searle and George Lakoff , have published original articles in VS . His work with Serbian and Russian scholars and writers included thoughts on Milorad Pavić and

952-419: A single, unequivocal line, the closed text , remains the least rewarding, while texts which are the most active between mind, society and life (open texts) are the liveliest and best—although valuation terminology was not his primary focus. Eco came to these positions through the study of language and from semiotics, rather than from psychology or historical analysis (as did theorists such as Wolfgang Iser , on

1020-617: A twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine L'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez ) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna , where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay " Ur-Fascism ", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies. Eco

1088-580: A variety of cultural programming. Following the publication of his first book in 1956, he became an assistant lecturer at his alma mater. In 1958, Eco left RAI and the University of Turin to complete 18 months of compulsory military service in the Italian Army . In 1959, following his return to university teaching, Eco was approached by Valentino Bompiani to edit a series on "Idee nuove" (New Ideas) for his eponymous publishing house in Milan. According to

1156-457: A visiting professor at New York University . In 1971 he took up a position as associate professor at the University of Bologna and spent 1972 as a visiting professor at Northwestern University . Following the publication of A Theory of Semiotics in 1975 , he was promoted to Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna . That same year, Eco stepped down from his position as senior non-fiction editor at Bompiani. From 1977 to 1978 Eco

1224-539: Is a French Grand Etablissement with a specializing in the teaching of languages and cultures from the world. Its coverage spans languages of Central Europe , Africa , Asia , America , and Oceania . With 104 languages taught as of 2024, this institution is currently the world's largest provider of language training courses. It is also informally called Langues’O ( IPA: [lɑ̃ɡz‿o] ) in French, an abbreviation for Langues orientales . The INALCO logo

1292-606: Is a narrative of the rise of Modern-day antisemitism , by way of the Dreyfus affair , The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other important 19th-century events which gave rise to hatred and hostility toward the Jewish people . In 2012, Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière published a book of conversations on the future of information carriers. Eco criticized social networks, saying for example that "Social media gives legions of idiots

1360-643: Is already at his level." Receiving notoriety among the general public thanks to widespread media coverage, the essay was later included in the collection Diario minimo (1963). Over this period, Eco began seriously developing his ideas on the "open" text and on semiotics, writing many essays on these subjects. In 1962 he published Opera aperta (translated into English as "The Open Work"). In it, Eco argued that literary texts are fields of meaning, rather than strings of meaning; and that they are understood as open, internally dynamic and psychologically engaged fields. Literature which limits one's potential understanding to

1428-683: Is an active member of Sorbonne Paris Cité, with 120,000 students, 8,500 faculty members, and 6,000 technical and administrative staff. Branches have been opened in Singapore, Buenos Aires and São Paulo. Inalco is in 2007 a founding member of the Consortium for Asian and African Studies (CAAS), with the School of Oriental and African Studies ( UK ), the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies ( Japan ), Leiden University ( Netherlands ), and

SECTION 20

#1732765960443

1496-546: Is made up of the school's acronym, each part of which is translated into languages written in non-Latin characters, corresponding to Inalco's fields of teaching and research. Inalco is structured partly into departments, whose perimeter corresponds to a region of the world, and partly into professionally-oriented courses or sectors. Departments may be monolingual or group together several language sections. Inalco's courses prepare students for careers in intercultural communication and training, international trade, teaching French as

1564-496: Is pressed to make a very difficult choice, one between his past and his future. He must either abandon his past to live his future or regain his past and sacrifice his future. The Prague Cemetery , Eco's sixth novel, was published in 2010. It is the story of a secret agent who "weaves plots, conspiracies, intrigues and attacks, and helps determine the historical and political fate of the European Continent". The book

1632-599: The National University of Singapore . Since, they have been joined by Columbia University ( USA ), the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies ( South Korea ), and Shanghai International Studies University ( China ). The foundation strives to develop the preservation, study, transmission, development and interaction of languages and cultures in France and around the world with projects involving

1700-754: The Slovenian scholar Matija Murko , who had written extensively about the heroic epic tradition in Serbo-Croatian and particularly in Bosnia with the help of phonograph recordings. From Parry's resulting research in Bosnia, the records of which are now housed at Harvard University , he and his student Albert Lord revolutionized Homeric scholarship . Meillet has been accused of meddling politics with his observation of languages. He had negative views on German and especially on Hungarian. Hungarian, he claimed,

1768-576: The 1200 to 1300 applicants are accepted to enter the cursus each year). Many students select a language out of a superficial interest in a country or culture, or due to individual connections, yet without the commitment to thoroughly learning those difficult languages. This issue is particularly acute for first and second-year students; those who reach the third year are much more motivated, and thus show much higher rates of success. Research at Inalco combines area studies and academic fields. Researchers study languages and civilizations that are increasingly in

1836-559: The Department of Japanese Studies. An explanation sometimes given is the difficulty of these courses, or the high level required by INALCO. A more likely cause is the absence of any entrance examination: any student can register in any course, regardless of their true motivation or academic level. But this is not the case of the Japanese Studies Department anymore for more than ten years 2015 (only around 300 of

1904-670: The Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences). In September 1962 he married Renate Ramge  [ de ] , a German graphic designer and art teacher with whom he had a son and a daughter. Eco divided his time between an apartment in Milan and a vacation house near Urbino . He had a 30,000-volume library in the former and a 20,000-volume library in the latter. Eco died at his Milanese home of pancreatic cancer , from which he had been suffering for two years, on

1972-404: The Middle Ages , art historian Nicholas Penny , meanwhile, accuses Eco of pandering, writing "I suspect that Eco may have first been seduced from intellectual caution, if not modesty, by the righteous cause of 'relevance' (a word much in favour when the earlier of these essays appeared) – a cause which Medievalists may be driven to embrace with particularly desperate abandon." At the other end of

2040-562: The Milan Triennale University, he declared: "I have seen several multimedia works, and I personally collaborated in the drafting of a publication of this type. They gave me a computer on which to run the finished work, but now remotely of just one year this machine is already outdated, rendered obsolete and unusable with the most recent multimedia works." Eco was also a translator: he translated into Italian Raymond Queneau 's Exercices de style (1947). Eco's translation

2108-859: The Perfect Language in the Culture of Europe'), Umberto Eco cites Meillet as saying: "Any kind of theoretical discussion is useless, Esperanto is functioning". In addition, Meillet was a consultant with the International Auxiliary Language Association , which presented Interlingua in 1951. Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales ( French pronunciation: [ɛ̃stity nasjɔnal de lɑ̃ɡ e sivilizasjɔ̃ ɔʁjɑ̃tal] , lit.   ' National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations ' ), abbreviated as INALCO ,

Antoine Meillet - Misplaced Pages Continue

2176-852: The Quest for the Universal" along the silk trade route from Guangzhou to Beijing. The latter culminated in a book entitled The Unicorn and the Dragon , which discussed the question of the creation of knowledge in China and in Europe . Scholars contributing to this volume were from China, including Tang Yijie , Wang Bin and Yue Daiyun, as well as from Europe : Furio Colombo, Antoine Danchin , Jacques Le Goff , Paolo Fabbri and Alain Rey . Eco published The Limits of Interpretation in 1990. From 1992 to 1993, Eco

2244-504: The Reader , philosopher Roger Scruton , attacking Eco's esoteric tendencies, writes that, "[Eco seeks] the rhetoric of technicality, the means of generating so much smoke for so long that the reader will begin to blame his own lack of perception, rather than the author's lack of illumination, for the fact that he has ceased to see." In his 1986 review of Faith in Fakes and Art and Beauty in

2312-513: The Rose also alludes to Borges's short story " The Library of Babel ". William of Baskerville is a logical-minded Englishman who is a friar and a detective. His name evokes both William of Ockham and Sherlock Holmes (by way of The Hound of the Baskervilles ); several passages which describe him are strongly reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's descriptions of Holmes. The Name of

2380-781: The Rose in 1980 , Eco was awarded the Strega prize in 1981, Italy's most prestigious literary award, receiving the Anghiari prize the same year. The following year, he received the Mendicis prize, and in 1985 the McLuhan Teleglobe prize. In 2005, Eco was honoured with the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, along with Roger Angell . In 2010, Eco was invited to join the Accademia dei Lincei . Eco

2448-407: The Rose was later made into a motion picture , which follows the plot, though not the philosophical and historical themes of the novel and stars Sean Connery , F. Murray Abraham , Christian Slater and Ron Perlman and a made-for-television mini-series . In Foucault's Pendulum (1988), three under-employed editors who work for a minor publishing house decide to amuse themselves by inventing

2516-607: The West from the perspective of non-Westerners (African and Chinese scholars), as defined by their own criteria. Eco developed this transcultural international network based on the idea of Alain le Pichon in West Africa . The Bologna program resulted in the first conference in Guangzhou, China , in 1991 entitled "Frontiers of Knowledge". The first event was soon followed by an Itinerant Euro-Chinese seminar on "Misunderstandings in

2584-506: The bulk of the book reminiscing on his life and the adventures that brought him to be stranded. He returned to semiotics in Kant and the Platypus in 1997, a book which Eco reputedly warned his fans away from, saying, "This a hard-core book. It's not a page-turner. You have to stay on every page for two weeks with your pencil. In other words, don't buy it if you are not Einstein." In 2000,

2652-411: The concept of intertextuality , or the inter-connectedness of all literary works. Eco cited James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges as the two modern authors who have influenced his work the most. Umberto Eco did not consider hypertexts a valid support for a novel. In his opinion, multimedia added nothing to the cultural value of the work, it only integrated its contents. In 1995, during a presentation at

2720-531: The course in their end-of-year exam (65% of success in the 3rd year, compared to 74% nation-wide). This is particularly true among students specializing in Japanese , Mandarin Chinese , Korean , Russian and Arabic historically the largest departments of INALCO. As an example, here is a table with approximate student numbers, indicating rates of success and failure in the first, second, and third year of

2788-406: The critical conscience at the center of Italian humanistic culture, uniting smaller worlds like no one before him." In 2017, a retrospective of Eco's work was published by Open Court as the 35th volume in the prestigious Library of Living Philosophers, edited by Sara G. Beardsworth and Randall E. Auxier , featuring essays by 23 contemporary scholars. Following the publication of The Name of

Antoine Meillet - Misplaced Pages Continue

2856-480: The end of his life, Eco came to believe that his family name was an acronym of ex caelis oblatus (from Latin: a gift from the heavens). As was the custom at the time, the name had been given to his grandfather (a foundling ) by an official in city hall. In a 2011 interview, Eco explained that a friend happened to come across the acronym on a list of Jesuit acronyms in the Vatican Library , informing him of

2924-420: The history and structure of Indo-European languages . One of his most-quoted statements is that "anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant ." He worked closely with linguists Paul Pelliot and Robert Gauthiot . Today Meillet is remembered as the mentor of an entire generation of linguists and philologists who would become central to French linguistics in

2992-724: The influential term " semiological guerrilla ", and influenced the theorization of guerrilla tactics against mainstream mass media culture , such as guerrilla television and culture jamming . Among the expressions used in the essay are "communications guerrilla warfare" and "cultural guerrilla". The essay was later included in Eco's book Faith in Fakes . Eco's approach to semiotics is often referred to as "interpretative semiotics". In his first book-length elaboration, his theory appears in La struttura assente (1968; literally: The Absent Structure ). In 1969 he left to become Professor of Semiotics at Milan Polytechnic , spending his first year as

3060-938: The institute's expertise: education, research, advancing knowledge and skills in a globalized world. More than 120 nationalities are represented by Inalco faculty and students. The institute, along with its teachers, students and partners, organizes over a hundred cultural events a year. Inalco also participates in several international film festivals (such as the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema ) and makes every effort to share its knowledge and expertise with society. a. ^ Institute: ተቋም [Amharic]; NAtional: национален [Bulgarian]; Languages: שפה [Hebrew]; Civilizations: 文化 [Chinese]; Oriental: شرقية [Arabic] 48°49′39″N 2°22′35″E  /  48.82750°N 2.37639°E  / 48.82750; 2.37639 Umberto Eco Umberto Eco OMRI (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016)

3128-603: The international auxiliary language Esperanto . Baudolino was published in 2000. Baudolino is a much-travelled polyglot Piedmontese scholar who saves the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates during the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade . Claiming to be an accomplished liar, he confides his history, from his childhood as a peasant lad endowed with a vivid imagination, through his role as adopted son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa , to his mission to visit

3196-423: The latter wrote the following (which, in the first of his two French theses, Parry quotes): Homeric epic is entirely composed of formulae handed down from poet to poet. An examination of any passage will quickly reveal that it is made up of lines and fragments of lines which are reproduced word for word in one or several other passages. Even those lines of which the parts happen not to recur in any other passage have

3264-451: The likely origin of the name. Umberto's father urged him to become a lawyer, but he entered the University of Turin (UNITO) , writing his thesis on the aesthetics of medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas under the supervision of Luigi Pareyson , for which he earned his Laurea degree in philosophy in 1954. After graduating, Eco worked for the state broadcasting station Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) in Milan, producing

3332-769: The lost treasure of the Templars. In 1988, Eco founded the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Republic of San Marino , and in 1992 he founded the Institute of Communication Disciplines at the University of Bologna, later founding the Higher School for the Study of the Humanities at the same institution. In 1988, at the University of Bologna, Eco created an unusual program called Anthropology of

3400-416: The mythical realm of Prester John . Throughout his retelling, Baudolino brags about his ability to swindle and tell tall tales, leaving the historian (and the reader) unsure of just how much of his story was a lie. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2005) is about Giambattista Bodoni , an old bookseller specializing in antiques who emerges from a coma with only some memories to recover his past. Bodoni

3468-426: The one hand, and Hans Robert Jauss , on the other). In his 1964 book Apocalittici e integrati , Eco continued his exploration of popular culture, analyzing the phenomenon of mass communication from a sociological perspective. From 1965 to 1969, he was Professor of Visual Communications at the University of Florence , where he gave the influential lecture "Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare", which coined

SECTION 50

#1732765960443

3536-556: The opening lecture. Among those giving presentations were anthropologists Balveer Arora, Varun Sahni , and Rukmini Bhaya Nair from India, Moussa Sow from Africa, Roland Marti and Maurice Olender from Europe, Cha Insuk from Korea , and Huang Ping and Zhao Tinyang from China. Also on the program were scholars from the fields of law and science including Antoine Danchin , Ahmed Djebbar and Dieter Grimm. Eco's interest in east–west dialogue to facilitate international communication and understanding also correlates with his related interest in

3604-481: The process of innovation by which autonomous words ended up as "grammatical agents". Subsequent to the further development and popularization of the concept by Jerzy Kuryłowicz and further development in the late 20th century, it would become a significant element of functionalist linguistics . At the Sorbonne, from 1924, Meillet supervised Milman Parry . In 1923, a year before Parry began his studies with Meillet,

3672-526: The publisher, he became aware of Eco through his short pamphlet of cartoons and verse Filosofi in libertà (Philosophers in Freedom, or Liberated Philosophers), which had originally been published in a limited print run of 550 under the James Joyce -inspired pseudonym Daedalus. That same year, Eco published his second book, Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale ( The Development of Medieval Aesthetics ),

3740-605: The right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots." From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation (2014). Numero Zero was published in 2015. Set in 1992 and narrated by Colonna, a hack journalist working on

3808-464: The same formulaic character, and it is doubtless pure chance that they are not attested elsewhere. Meillet offered the opinion that oral-formulaic composition might be a distinctive feature of orally transmitted epics (which the Iliad was said to be). He suggested to Parry that he observe the mechanics of a living oral tradition to confirm whether that suggestion was valid; he also introduced Parry to

3876-402: The spectrum, Eco has been praised for his levity and encyclopedic knowledge, which allowed him to make abstruse academic subjects accessible and engaging. In a 1980 review of The Name of the Rose , literary critic and scholar Frank Kermode refers to Theory of Semiotics , as "a vigorous but difficult treatise", finding Eco's novel, "a wonderfully interesting book – a very odd thing to be born of

3944-548: The spotlight – Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and as far as the Arctic – and are central to the major issues of the 21st century. Fourteen research teams, often partnered with other research organizations, PhD programs, and a publishing service form the backbone of research at Inalco. Inalco also has a project management and knowledge transfer service. The research teams, administration offices, and doctoral school are housed in

4012-511: The twentieth century, such as Émile Benveniste , Georges Dumézil , and André Martinet . In 1921, with the help of linguists Paul Boyer and André Mazon  [ fr ] , he founded the Revue des études slaves . Today, Meillet is known for his contribution to historical linguistics . He is notable for having coined and formalized the concept of grammaticalisation (influential but still controversial today) to denote what he viewed as

4080-469: Was a visiting professor at Harvard University and from 2001 to 2002, at St Anne's College, Oxford . The Island of the Day Before (1994) was Eco's third novel. The book, set in the 17th century, is about a man stranded on a ship within sight of an island which he believes is on the other side of the international date-line. The main character is trapped by his inability to swim and instead spends

4148-478: Was a visiting professor at Yale University and then at Columbia University . He returned to Yale from 1980 to 1981, and Columbia in 1984. During this time he completed The Role of the Reader (1979) and Semiotics and Philosophy of Language (1984). Eco drew on his background as a medievalist in his first novel The Name of the Rose (1980), a historical mystery set in a 14th-century monastery. Franciscan friar William of Baskerville , aided by his assistant Adso,

SECTION 60

#1732765960443

4216-552: Was an Italian medievalist , philosopher, semiotician , novelist, cultural critic , and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel The Name of the Rose , a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory , as well as Foucault's Pendulum , his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes. Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to

4284-635: Was an accountant before the government called him to serve in three wars. During World War II , Umberto and his mother, Giovanna (Bisio), moved to a small village in the Piedmontese mountainside. His village was liberated in 1945, and he was exposed to American comic books, the European Resistance, and the Holocaust. Eco received a Salesian education and made references to the order and its founder in his works and interviews. Towards

4352-903: Was an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford and Associate member of the Royal Academy of Belgium In 2014 he was awarded the Gutenberg Prize of the International Gutenberg Society and the City of Mainz . During his university studies, Eco ceased to believe in God and left the Catholic Church , later helping co-found the Italian skeptic organization Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Affermazioni sulle Pseudoscienze (Italian Committee for

4420-442: Was awarded honorary doctorate degrees for the first time by the University of Leuven , then by the University of Odense in 1986, Loyola University Chicago in 1987, the University of Liege in 1989, the University of Glasgow in 1990, the University of Kent in 1992, Indiana University Bloomington in 1992, University of Tartu in 1996, Rutgers University in 2002, and the University of Belgrade in 2009. Additionally, Eco

4488-445: Was born on 5 January 1932 in the city of Alessandria , in Piedmont in northern Italy. The spread of Italian Fascism throughout the region influenced his childhood. At the age of ten, he received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles after responding positively to the young Italian fascist writing prompt of "Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?" His father, Giulio, one of thirteen children,

4556-457: Was published under the title Esercizi di stile in 1983. He was also the translator of Sylvie , a novella by Gérard de Nerval . As an academic studying philosophy, semiotics, and culture, Eco divided critics as to whether his theorizing should be seen as brilliant or an unnecessary vanity project obsessing over minutiae, while his fiction writing stunned critics with its simultaneous complexity and popularity. In his 1980 review of The Role of

4624-431: Was too difficult a language full of loanwords and not capable of being a culture bearer (in a way that he claimed other Finno-Ugric languages were unable to become such). His views on Hungarian provoked a critical response from the Hungarian writer Dezső Kosztolányi . Meillet supported the use of an international auxiliary language . In his book La Ricerca della Lingua Perfetta nella Cultura Europea ('The Pursuit of

#442557