Umberto Eco
Semiotics   General concepts Sign (relation relational complex) Code Confabulation Connotation / Denotation Encoding / Decoding Lexical Modality Representation Salience Semiosis Semiosphere Semiotic elements and sign classes Umwelt Value Fields Biosemiotics Cognitive semiotics Computational semiotics Literary semiotics Semiotics of culture Methods Commutation test Paradigmatic analysis Syntagmatic analysis Semioticians Mikhail Bakhtin Roland Barthes Marcel Danesi John Deely Umberto Eco Algirdas Julien Greimas Félix Guattari Louis Hjelmslev Vyacheslav Ivanov Roman Jakobson Roberta Kevelson Kalevi Kull Juri Lotman Charles S. Peirce Augusto Ponzio Ferdinand de Saussure Thomas Sebeok Michael Silverstein Eero Tarasti Vladimir Toporov Jakob von Uexküll Related topics Copenhagen–Tartu school Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School Post-structuralism Structuralism Postmodernity v t e Umberto Eco, OMRI (Italian: [umˈbɛrto ˈɛːko]; born 5 January 1932) is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He has since written further novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His most recent novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, was a best-seller. Eco has also written academic texts, children's books and many essays. He is founder of the Dipartimento di Comunicazione (Department of Media Studies) at the University of the Republic of San Marino, President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici (Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities), University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since November 2010), and an Honorary Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford.