Wikipedia on Umberto Eco:
Umberto Eco (born January 5, 1932) is an Italian novelist and philosopher, best known for his novels and essays. Eco was born in Alessandria, in the Italian province of Piedmont. He is an author and semiotician. He works as a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna.
Eco employs his education as a medievalist to good advantage in his novel The Name of the Rose, which was made into a movie staring Sean Connery as a monk who investigates a series of murders revolving around a monastery library. He is particularly good at translating medieval religious controversies and heresies into modern political and economic terms so that the reader can understand them without being a theologian.
Eco's work illustrates the post-modernist literary theory concept of hypertextuality, or the inter-connectedness of all literary works and their interpretation.
Dates:
(1932-)
Nationality:
Italian
Genre(s):
Novels, essays
Recent Work:
Baudolino, 2002
