Childhood & Early Life
Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932 in Alessandria, in the Piedmont region in the northern Italy. His father, Giulio, was an accountant by profession and served in three wars in his lifetime and his mother, Giovanna, during those years moved with Eco to Piedmontese.
Eco’s father wanted him to become a lawyer but he took up medieval philosophy and literature from the University of Turin and wrote thesis on Thomas Aquinas, and earned his Laurea in philosophy in the year of 1954.
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Career
After finishing his studies at the University of Turin, Eco worked as a cultural editor at the state broadcasting station called the Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI). Around the same time, he kept lecturing at the Turin University, as a guest lecturer.
In 1956, his first book called ‘II problema estetico in San Tommaso’was published. The book was an extension of his doctoral thesis, which was influenced by many artists, writers, musicians and painters that he was friends with at RAI.
In 1959, his second book ‘Sviluppo dell’estetica medieval (The Development of Medieval Aesthetics)’ was published. This book made him renowned as a prolific thinker of medieval philosophy.
In 1959, he became the senior non-fiction editor at the Bompiani publishinh house, Milan.
In 1962, his essay called ‘Opera aperta (The Open Work)’ was published. He professed in his work that literature is limiting and gives you a unidirectional meaning of life and art, which makes it a closed text while essays and open texts are more open to individual meaning and understanding.
Throughout late 1950s and 1960s, a lot of Eco’s mass media and culture work was published in newspapers and journals of Italy. His essay ‘Fenomenologia di Mike Bongjorno (Phenomenology of Mike Bongjorno) became his famous work during this time.
From 1963-1967, his works like ‘Diario minimo’ and ‘Apocalittici e integrati’ was published. During this time he gave his famous lecture ‘Towards a Semiological Guerilla Warfare’, which influenced the mainstream mass media cultutre.
From 1967-1997, many of his books were published that portrayed his thinking towards contemporary semiotics. Some of these works were ‘La struttura assente (The Absent Structure)’, ‘A Theory of Semiotics’, ‘The Role of the Reader’, ‘Semiotics and Philosophy of L+anguage’, ‘The Limits of Interpretation’, ‘Kant and the Platypus’.
In 1980, he wrote his first historical fiction called ‘The Name of the Rose’, which was a historical mystery set in the 14th century. The book was an indirect tribute to one of the influences in Eco life, Jorge Luis Borges. It was made into a motion picture starring Sean Connery.
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In 1988, he wrote a novel called ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’. The novel is about three under-employed editors from a small publishing house who design a conspiracy theory to amuse themselves and how they slowly get consumed in it.
In 1994, he wrote ‘The Island of the Day Before’, which was set in the 17th century. The main protagonist in the book is obsessed with his past and the adventures he had before with the sea.
In 2000, ‘Baudolino’ was published. It is the story of a knight called Baudolino who saves a historian and tells him the story of his magnanimous life which is of course full of historical exaggeration, leaving the historian and the reader unsure of how much of it is a lie.
In 2005, he published his book called ‘The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana’, which has an old bookseller its main protagonist who is suffering from partial memory loss and struggles to recuperate his past.
In 2010, Eco’s 6th novel called ‘The Prague Cemetery’ was published. The book dwells into the past historical events that led to the rise of Jewish hatred. It portrays the rise of modern time anti-Semitism.
He was a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna, from 2008 till his death.
Facts About Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco was fluent in multiple languages, including Latin, Ancient Greek, and Hebrew, in addition to his native Italian.
Eco was a lover of pop culture and incorporated references to comics, movies, and music in his works, showcasing his diverse interests.
He was a semiotician, which means he studied signs and symbols and how they are used to convey meaning in various forms of communication.
Eco was known for his sense of humor and wit, often incorporating clever wordplay and puns into his writing.
In addition to being a renowned author, Eco was also a respected academic, teaching at universities in Italy and around the world.
