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While Umberto Eco's intellectual itinerary was marked by his early studies of post-Crocean aesthetics and his spectacular concentration on linguistics, information theory, structuralism, semiotics, cognitive science, and media studies, what constitutes the peculiarity of his critical and fiction writing is the tension between a typically medieval search for a code and the hermeneutic representative of deconstructive tendencies. This tension between cosmos and chaos, order and disorder, is reflected in the word chaosmos. In this brilliant assessment of the philosophical basis of Eco's critical and fictional writing, Cristina Farronato explores the other distinctive aspect of Eco's thought - t...
Gospel scholarship has long recognized that Matthean Christology is a rich, multifaceted tapestry weaving multifold Old Testment figures together in the person of Jesus. It is somewhat strange, therefore, that scholarship has found little role for the figure of Isaac in the Gospel of Matthew. Employing Umberto Eco's theory of the Model Reader as a theoretical basis to ground the phenomenon of Matthean intertextuality, this work contends that when read rightly as a coherent narrative in its first-century setting, with proper attention to both biblical texts and extrabiblical traditions about Isaac, the Gospel of Matthew evinces a significant Isaac typology in service of presenting Jesus as new temple and decisive sacrifice.
In God in the Labyrinth, Andrew Hollingsworth uses Umberto Eco's semiotic concept of the model encyclopedia as the basis for a new model and approach to systematic theology. Following an in-depth analysis of the model encyclopedia in Eco's semiotics, he demonstrates the implications this model has for epistemology, hermeneutics, and doctrinal development. This work aims to bridge the unfortunate gap in research that exists between the fields of systematic theology and semiotics by demonstrating semiotic insights for theological method.
The Author in Criticism:Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom explores the cultural and historic patterns and differences in the critical readings of Italian author Italo Calvino’s works in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Italy. It considers the external factors that contribute to create recognizable patterns in the readings of Calvino’s texts in different contexts. This volume therefore covers, most notably, matters of genre (science fiction, postmodernism), cultural perceptions and conventions, the (re)current image of the author in different media, academic schools, -curricula and -canons, biographical information (...
Offers a unique comparative exploration of the role of tradition in Islam and Christianity. The idea of 'tradition' has enjoyed a variety of senses and definitions in Islam and Christianity, but both have cleaved at certain times to a supposedly 'golden age' of tradition from the past. The author suggests there has been a chain of thinkers from classical Islam to the twentieth century who share a common interest in ijtihad (or independent thinking). Drawing on past and present evidence, and using Christian tradition as a focus for contrast and comparison, the author highlights the seemingly paradoxical harmony between tradition and itjihad in Islam.The author draws on a variety of primary and secondary sources including contemporary newspaper and journal
This cutting-edge collection, born of a belief in the value of approaching ‘translation’ in a wide range of ways, contains essays of interest to students and scholars of translation, literary and textual studies. It provides insights into the relations between translation and comparative literature, contrastive linguistics, cultural studies, painting and other media. Subjects and authors discussed include: the translator as ‘go-between’; the textual editor as translator; Ghirri’s photography and Celati’s fiction; the European lending library; La Bible d’Amiens; the coining of Italian phraseological units; Michèle Roberts’s Impossible Saints; the impact of modern translations for stage on perceptions of ancient Greek drama; and the translation of slang, intensifiers, characterisation, desire, the self, and America in 1990s Italian fiction. The collection closes with David Platzer’s discussion of translating Dacia Maraini’s poetry into English and with his new translations of ‘Ho Sognato una Stazione’ (‘I Dreamed of a Station’) and ‘Le Tue Bugie’ (‘Your Lies’).
Ricci's book ranges widely over Calvino's oeuvre to illustrate the accuracy of the idea articulated by Calvino himself that a visual image lies at the origin of all his narrative. The book's main theme is the difficult interface between word and image that Calvino struggled with throughout his career, the act of perception that rendered visible that which was invisible and transformed what was seen into what is read. Ricci holds that Calvino's narrative has an 'imagocentric' program and that his literary strategy is 'ekphrastic' i.e. it is characterized by literary description of visual representation, real or imaginary. The book is interdisciplinary in nature and will interest not only scholars of literature but also those who work with the visual arts and with information technology.
Motivated by an interest in the long-standing divisions between analytic and Continental philosophy author Roger V. Bell engages in an extensive reading of Cavell's work from the position of his differences with Derrida. As Derrida himself has not responded (at least in writing) to Cavell's comments and criticism, the opportunity is rife for examining this latent debate to gain greater insight into the relationship between their work Bell investigates Cavell and Derrida's development within the American philosophical scene. The critique of Cavell's sense of American inheritance serves as a way to momentarily direct the reader away from the abyss and toward the westward view intrinsic to the ...
The controversial Leslie Fiedler (1917-2003) was one of the first critics of popular culture as well as an early proponent of queer theory. This book traces the evolution of this larger-than-life figure through an extensive examination of his works. Beginning with his homoerotic reading of the relationship between Jim and Huck Finn in the Mark Twain novel, this book covers how his many contributions have been provocative, outrageous, novel, and enduring.
Historicizing Fiction/Fictionalizing History brings together two authors, Umberto Eco and Orhan Pamuk, not frequently studied in comparison. By focusing on their non/fictional works to present a unique study of the methods and concepts of representation, Murthy uses contemporary historical novels to examine fictional depictions of reality, and provides a fresh perspective on representation studies in literature. Written in an accessible style, and tapping into fields as varied as literary and critical theory, the historical novel, postmodernism, and historiography, Historicizing Fiction/Fictionalizing History considers the ways in which reality, as discourse, confronts a text-external realit...