Page 322 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories Gowher Ahmad Naik, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 29: Umberto Eco’s ‘Casablanca: Cult Movies and
Intertextual Collage’ (History and War-Background)

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
29.1 Biographical Information
29.2 Eco’s Major Works
29.3 Critical Reception
29.4 History and War-Background
29.5 Eco’s Writing
29.6 Summary
29.7 Key-Words
29.8 Review Questions
29.9 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Discuss about Umberto Eco.
• Explain History and War-Background.

Introduction

Having previously established a professional rapport among scholars with his influential works
in both semiotics and medieval culture. With its ingenious plot and a protagonist conflicted by
spiritual and intellectual concerns, this novel enthralled both popular and critical audiences
worldwide and was later adapted to film. Foremost, however, Eco is regarded as one of the
world’s leading semioticians whose analysis of the linguistic and aesthetic codes or “signs,” by
which a culture communicates and understands itself, span nearly forty years. Indeed, the
philosophical themes of Eco’s academic research animate his erudite fiction, which dramatizes
principles of semiotic theory through multi-faceted allusions to a broad range of significant cultural
artifacts. Scholars have for some time widely acknowledged Eco’s brilliant and substantial
contributions to semiotic thought—a discipline that Eco almost single-handedly legitimated with
his own theoretical writings, according to many. Similarly, most critics of Eco’s hugely popular
novels have applauded his knack for making the concepts of semiotics palatable to a general
audience, who have in turn prompted a resurgence of interest in his earlier works.

Eco achieved literary celebrity with the publication of his best-selling first novel Il
Nome della rosa (1980; The Name of the Rose).

29.1 Biographical Information

Eco was born on January 5, 1932, in Alessandria, Italy, the son of Guilio and Givovanna Eco. He
attended the University of Turin, where he studied the philosophies and aesthetic theories of the

316 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY