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82-660: Umberto Eco OMRI (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) 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

164-466: 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

246-572: A demiurge , but the Christian interpretation of Plato by Augustine and Dionysius holds that the forms mirror the perfection of God's own mind. This notion underlies the more significant notion of mimesis , whereby art and material beauty are considered the mere reflection of the beauty of that realm. Aristotle followed Plato's approach in the Hippias Major and the Gorgias , positing

328-559: 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),

410-480: 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, 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

492-649: A condition of beauty, such as in his belief that the numbers 1,2,3 and 4 were the source of musical principles. According to Umberto Eco, Medieval conceptions of beauty were based on the earlier Classical attempt to link mathematics with beauty: '[This conception of beauty's] many variations are reducible to the one fundamental principle of unity in variety .' These aesthetics also had a moral dimension borrowed from Pythagoras, for whom, for instance, certain musical proportions were believed to lead to sins. Musical principles were often enacted into architecture so that buildings would be built according to an 'order reminiscent of

574-463: 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

656-450: 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

738-415: A cross,' which created a sense of 'balance when viewed from within the cathedral'. As pointed out by both Charles Rufus Morey and Charles S. Baldwin, cathedrals embody the elision of theology and aesthetics. A systematic aesthetics of light began to appear in the thirteenth century. Light was believed to endow physical objects with nobility and beauty because it 'constitut[ed] the essence of colour and at

820-461: 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

902-407: A musical melody'. For this reason, architects were frequently called 'composers' who created beautiful buildings according to a 'divine arrangement' whereby correct proportions of latitude, longitude and altitude harmonised. Cathedrals exemplify construction according to these principles, and theology also informed the sense of proportion so that 'from an aerial viewpoint [they] were in the shape of

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984-465: 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

1066-586: 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 ",

1148-703: 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

1230-681: 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

1312-419: 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

1394-473: 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 the night of 19 February 2016. From 2008 to the time of his death at the age of 84, he was a professor emeritus at

1476-614: 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

1558-580: 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

1640-454: 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

1722-604: 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

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1804-641: 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

1886-680: Is divine, even though it may appear imperfect. Such a conception, according to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy , is important because medieval aesthetics were thereafter 'fundamentally based on [his] brief treatment of the Beautiful' in On the Divine Names . This treatment also involved the important step of using 'Beauty' as a divine name . According to Brendan Thomas Sammon, this approach influenced how St Thomas Aquinas came to treat beauty. St Thomas Aquinas gave two individualised definitions of beauty in

1968-444: Is in part due to the fact that the broader philosophical mentality of the period was highly traditional and that 'innovation came without fanfare'. For Eco, his historical approach is evident in his belief that aesthetics must be viewed as 'the ways in which a given epoch solved for itself aesthetic problems as they presented themselves at the time to the sensibilities and culture of its people'. Medieval aesthetics largely derive from

2050-544: Is one of his most fundamental ideas. He writes that beauty is objective and that this objectivity is external to humans, who can contemplate beauty without having created it. Augustine wrote that something 'pleases because it is beautiful'. He highlighted that beauty is, in and of itself, an indispensable aspect of creation; it is inherently harmonious and its existence aligns with humanity's deepest, but 'proper' desires because measure , form and order make something good. In his work, On Music, Augustine asserts that beauty

2132-495: 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

2214-472: Is the Cause of everything, meaning that beauty and the beautiful are the same because they have the same cause . He asserted that all things have beauty because everything originates in the Cause and that this means nothing can lose its beauty. For Pseudo-Dionysius there exists an Absolute Beauty from which all material beauty is derived through 'emanation'. This results in the earthly encounter with beauty that

2296-468: Is the unity of disparate parts, such as lines, colours and sounds. Augustine also expanded the Roman notion of number in rhythm to beauty more generally by regarding rhythm as the sole source of beauty. According to Augustine, every experience of beauty originates in and is determined by rhythm. Even though he placed heavy emphasis on the beauty of number and therefore equality or balance, he also realised

2378-525: Is therefore aligned with the Good and this definition makes it compatible with Christian spirituality. Plato's theory of the forms underlies much of the writings of St Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius. The theory refers to the way in which material objects are merely the reflection or attempt at representation of a perfect, abstract reality. Within Plato's framework, these pure forms of reality are determined by

2460-515: The Summa Theologica . The first asserts that the beautiful is experienced through visual pleasure, while the second states that the beautiful is a pleasurable perception. These amount to a single definition of beauty that accounts for both subjective and objective experiences of beauty where the emphasis on sight and perception creates a holistic groundwork for understanding beauty. His most historically important idea regarding aesthetics

2542-544: The Bible inspired an interrogation of the relationship between nature and the divine. The writings of St Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius integrated Plato and Plotinus with early Church Doctrine, while St Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotelian philosophy into his discussion of beauty in nature. The theological concerns of these writers meant that their aesthetic theories were relatively neglected post- Enlightenment , but their influence had been extensive, especially during

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2624-547: The Renaissance . In recent times, the works of Spanish director Luis Buñuel have been inspired by medieval theories of beauty. Aesthetics as a distinct philosophical branch did not exist during the Middle Ages. Medieval aesthetics as a subject comprises studies of key medieval thinkers by modern writers such as Umberto Eco and Edgar de Bruyne . That medieval philosophies of beauty are implicit rather than explicit

2706-610: The University of Bologna , where he had taught since 1971. Ten essays on methods of abductive inference in Poe 's Dupin , Doyle 's Holmes , Peirce and many others, 236 pages. (Art by Eugenio Carmi) Order of Merit of the Italian Republic The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic ( Italian : Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana ) is the most senior Italian order of merit . It

2788-644: 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 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

2870-591: 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 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

2952-796: 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 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

3034-606: 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 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,

3116-561: 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

3198-494: The Pythagorean notion musica mundana whereby the beauty of the world was viewed as a harmonious interaction of contrasts, namely that between macrocosm and microcosm. Proportion was considered an aspect of reality because it was 'not a product of the human mind, nor an invention of the musician'. The work of bishop and philosopher, Robert Grosseteste , embodied these assumptions as it used mathematics to explore harmony as

3280-850: 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

3362-692: 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 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

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3444-460: 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

3526-406: 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

3608-414: 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 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 ,

3690-607: 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

3772-576: The aesthetics of light, because the Latin etymologies of the French for bronze, gold and silver reflect a belief that they were made of illuminated air and that this was the source of the beauty. J. Huizinga points to the importance of symbolism during the Middle Ages as a way of comprehending the purpose of existence and therefore, it is key to understanding the medieval paradigm. Aesthetics were underlaid by theological and philosophical principles because

3854-448: The base assumption of the era was that God created everything in His likeness, meaning that aspects of His being could be perceived through a symbolic view of the world. For this reason, art did not explicitly depict the transcendentals of truth and beauty because symbolism was instead considered the closest way to apprehending 'traces' of the transcendentals in creation. Representational art

3936-505: 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,

4018-410: 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

4100-480: 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

4182-555: The first time a rank higher than Knight. The minimum age requirement is normally 35. The Knight Grand Cross with Collar is awarded only to heads of state . Medieval aesthetics Medieval aesthetics is characterized by its synthesis of Classical and Christian conceptions of beauty. The thought of Aristotle and Plato , framed by that of the Neoplatonist Plotinus , placed an emphasis on concepts such as harmony, light, and symbolism. By contrast, readings of

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4264-795: The five wise virgins, and twelve columns the twelve apostles. Pulpits were supported by eleven columns, symbolising the eleven apostles who were present at the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and the ciborium on ten columns symbolises the apostles who were not present at the Crucifixion '. Churches evinced considerable symbolism, which is particularly noticeable in Eastern churches where the writing of Pseudo-Dionysius enjoyed considerable attention, with his notion of emanation allowing churches to be viewed as extension of God. Edessa Cathedral, for instance,

4346-467: The good as independent of each other. This move thus enabled Aquinas to develop an implicit criteria for beauty: actuality, proportion, radiance and wholeness. Due to the enduring legacy of the Pythagoreans and Boethius ' De Musica , musical principles of proportion were applied to the arts more generally, but with prominence in music and architecture. This gave rise to the re-appropriation of

4428-519: The inferiority of smell, taste and touch by connecting aesthetic experience with the higher sensations of sight and sound. In Poetics he established some grounds for the medieval argument that the beautiful can be equated with the good as 'he believed a tragedy could cleanse negative emotions such as fear and pity'. Plotinus is notable for his writings about beauty, which form a substantial part of what has come to be known as Neoplatonism. Plotinus particularly influenced medieval aesthetics by expanding

4510-721: 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

4592-603: 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

4674-535: The liberty of the citizens) encircling the head of Italia turrita on the reverse. The six degrees with corresponding ribbons are as follows (with numbers to 2 June 2020): The order is bestowed by decree of the President of the Italian Republic , as head of the orders of knighthood, on the recommendation of the President of the Council of Ministers . Except in exceptional circumstances, no one can be awarded for

4756-450: 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

4838-826: 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

4920-416: 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

5002-440: The notion of beauty so that it was not exclusively conceived in terms of symmetry. The aesthetics of St Augustine are less theological than that of subsequent thinkers due in part to his earlier life as a pagan. His conversion to Christianity allowed Augustine to implant Christianity with Classical ideals, whilst innovating Platonic and Ciceronian ideas with Christian belief. Augustine's notion of beauty's objective existence

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5084-425: 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

5166-555: 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

5248-711: The order are OMRI . The order effectively replaced national orders such as the Civil Order of Savoy (1831), the Order of the Crown of Italy (1868), the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus (1572) and the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation (1362). Investiture takes place twice a year – on 2 June, the anniversary of the foundation of the Republic , and on 27 December, the anniversary of

5330-570: The promulgation of the Italian Constitution . However, those awards on Presidential motu proprio , related to termination of service or granted to foreigners, may be made at any time. The badge, modified in 2001, bears the inscription Al Merito della Repubblica encircling the national coat of arms on the obverse and the Latin Patriæ Unitati (for the union of the country) and Civium Libertati (for

5412-411: 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 ),

5494-449: The purpose of contrast or the inequality of parts. For example, he attributed the beauty of the world to the contrast between things and therefore he believed the correct and natural placement of things results in beauty. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite developed the Classical notion that the beautiful is aligned with the good by writing that beauty is the manifestation of goodness. He justified this assumption through his idea that God

5576-417: 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

5658-403: 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 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

5740-401: The same [was] the external condition of its visibility,' according to Edgar De Bruyne. The medieval concern with light was constant throughout aesthetics because it extended the Neoplatonist notion that light was emanation by placing it within an Aristotelian cosmology and asserting that it was the emanation of God. This idea is to be found particularly in the work of Pseudo-Dionysius where

5822-441: The straight rays of the sun impressing orderliness on its surface. Light was considered to be intrinsically connected to heat, which was reflected in the belief that male beauty comprised a 'fresh and rosy, halfway between pale and flushed' complexion, which was influenced by the soul's warming of the blood because the soul had properties of light. De Bruyne also points to the contemporary focus on rare stones and metals as evincing

5904-400: The sun symbolises the eternity of light and therefore the constancy of beauty. Robert Grosseteste 's On Light is an example of the movement during the Middle Ages of trying to understand light in terms of beauty. One of the thirteenth century scholastics , Grosseteste helped to develop a 'metaphysics of light', whereby it was believed that the world was formed by the presence of light, with

5986-663: The writings of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, when viewed through the lens of medieval Biblical exegesis . Aesthetic consideration of the material world comes mainly from the Old Testament. According to Tatarkiewicz, the importation of the Greek concept of kalos into Christian thought during the translation of the Hebrew into the Greek meant that the passage in Genesis , 'And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it

6068-467: 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

6150-478: 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,

6232-632: 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

6314-574: 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,

6396-405: Was established in 1951 by the second President of the Italian Republic , Luigi Einaudi . The highest-ranking honour of the Republic, it is awarded for "merit acquired by the nation" in the fields of literature, the arts, economy, public service, and social, philanthropic and humanitarian activities and for long and conspicuous service in civilian and military careers. The post-nominal letters for

6478-425: Was imbued with symbolism because this was a solution to balancing the notion that truth was grounded in natural observation against the attempt to depict the spiritual world, which was considered inherently different to reality and thus required idealisation without distorting truth. As outlined by Tatartkiewicz, architecture was heavily founded upon notions of symbolism based on numbers with 'five doors symboli[sing]

6560-456: 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

6642-467: Was that the beautiful is pleasurable, while not all pleasures are beautiful. Unlike his predecessor Pseudo-Dionysius, who started his aesthetics from the assumption of an absolute and divine beauty, Aquinas took material beauty subject to empiricism as his starting point. In departing from the Platonic transcendent, Aquinas moved towards Aristotelianism which enabled the exploration of the beautiful and

6724-549: Was very beautiful,' emphasised the aesthetic qualities of creation. This sentiment was similarly translated into the Book of Wisdom which advances the mathematical nature of aesthetics and aligns the work of both God and humanity through their common manipulation of these mathematical qualities in order to create beauty. In the Symposium the notion of the beautiful soul is introduced as more valuable than material beauty. Beauty

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