Umberto Eco

Michael Caesar is Professor of Italian and Head of Italian Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Acknowledgement ix 

Note on References x 

Introduction 1 

1 Form, Interpretation and the Open Work 6

On form and interpretation: from Croce to Pareyson 6

Art and rationality 10

The appearance of Opera aperta 15

The poetics of the open work 18

Beyond ‘openness’ 23 

2 A Critical View of Culture: Mass Communications, Politics and the Avant-garde  28

The role of the avant-garde 29

Mass communications and theories of mass culture 37

Television and semiotic guerrilla war 43

Openness and structure 47 

3 Introducing the Study of Signs 54

Signals and sense 55

Ambiguity, self-reflexivity and the aesthetic message 64

The critique of iconism 67

Some provisional conclusions on the aesthetic message 69 

4 A Theory of Semiotics 76

From La struttura assente to A Theory of Semiotics 76

Communication, code and signification 81

Sign and sign-function 83

Sign production, iconism and the aesthetic message (again) 90 

5 Semiotics Bounded and Unbound 100

The boundaries of semiotics 102

The dynamics of semiosis 111 

6 Theory and Fiction 120

Readers and worlds Texts 120 

7 Secrets, Paranoia and Critical Reading 145 

8 Kant, the Platypus and the Horizon 162 

Notes 171 

Select Bibliography 184

Index 193