The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts

by Umberto Eco

Overview

" . . . not merely interesting and novel, but also exceedingly provocative and heuristically fertile." --The Review of Metaphysics

" . . . essential reading for anyone interesting in . . . the new reader-centered forms of criticism." --Library Journal

In this erudite and imaginative book, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between 'open' and 'closed' texts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253203182
Publisher:	Indiana University Press (IPS)
Publication date:	01/01/1979
Series:	Advances in Semiotics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	286
Sales rank:	389,363
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Hometown:

Bologna, Italy

Date of Birth:

January 5, 1932

Date of Death:

February 19, 2016

Place of Birth:

Alessandria, Italy

Education:

Ph.D., University of Turin, 1954

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: The Role of the Reader

I. Open
1. The Poetics of the Open Work
2. The Semantics of Metaphor
3. On the Possibility of Generating Aesthetic Messages in an Edenic Language

II. Closed
4. The Myth of Superman
5. Rhetoric and Ideology in Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris
6. Narrative Structures in Fleming

III. Open/Closed
7. Peirce and the Semiotic Foundations of Openness: Signs as Texts and Texts as Signs
8. Lector in Fabula: Pragmatic Strategy in a Metanarrative Text

Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography