Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932, in Alessandria, a city in Italy’s Piedmont region, and died on February 19, 2016. He worked as a medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. English-speaking audiences know him best for two novels: *The Name of the Rose* (1980), a historical mystery that weaves semiotics with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory, and *Foucault’s Pendulum* (1988), which explores occult history and its reinterpretation through the New Age movement.

Eco wrote constantly across his life, producing children’s books, translations from French and English, and a twice-monthly column called “La Bustina di Minerva” (Minerva’s Matchbook) for the magazine *L’Espresso*, which he started in 1985. His final column, a critical look at Francesco Hayez’s Romantic paintings, appeared on January 27, 2016. At his death, he held the title of Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for most of his career. In the 21st century, his 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism” gained renewed attention; in it, he lists fourteen general traits he believed define fascist ideologies.

Eco’s early life was shaped by the spread of Italian fascism. When he was ten, he won the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles for a positive response to a fascist writing prompt: “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” His father Giulio, an accountant and one of thirteen children, served in three wars. During World War II, Eco and his mother Giovanna (Bisio) moved to a small mountain village in Piedmont. After the village was liberated in 1945, he encountered American comic books, the European Resistance, and the Holocaust. He received a Salesian education and later referenced the order and its founder in his work and interviews.

Late in life, Eco believed his family name derived from the Latin acronym *ex caelis oblatus* (“a gift from the heavens”). As was customary, the name had been given to his grandfather, a foundling, by a city hall official. In a 2011 interview, Eco said a friend found the acronym on a list of Jesuit terms in the Vatican Library, revealing the likely origin. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but Eco entered the University of Turin instead. He wrote his thesis on the aesthetics of medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas under Luigi Pareyson, earning a Laurea in philosophy in 1954.

After graduating, Eco worked for the state broadcaster RAI in Milan, producing cultural programming. His first book came out in 1956, and he became an assistant lecturer at his alma mater. In 1958, he left RAI and the University of Turin for 18 months of compulsory military service. In 1959, Valentino Bompiani asked him to edit a series called “Idee nuove” (New Ideas) for his Milan publishing house. Bompiani had noticed Eco through a short pamphlet of cartoons and verse, *Filosofi in libertà* (Philosophers in Freedom), published under the pseudonym Daedalus (inspired by James Joyce) in a limited run of 550 copies.

That same year, Eco published his second book, *Sviluppo dell’estetica medievale* (The Development of Medieval Aesthetics), a scholarly monograph expanding on his Aquinas work. He earned his *libera docenza* in aesthetics in 1961 and became a lecturer in the subject in 1963. He then left the University of Turin to teach architecture at the University of Milan in 1964.

In 1961, Eco’s essay “Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno” appeared in a Pirelli magazine. It critically analyzed a popular but unrefined quiz show host, noting that Bongiorno “does not provoke inferiority complexes, despite presenting himself as an idol, and the public acknowledge him, by being grateful to him and loving him. He represents an ideal that nobody need strive to reach because everyone is already at his level.” The essay gained notoriety through media coverage and was later collected in *Diario minimo* (1963). During this period, Eco developed his ideas on the “open” text and semiotics. In 1962’s *Opera aperta* (translated as *The Open Work*), he argued that literary texts are fields of meaning, not strings of meaning, and are best understood as open, internally dynamic, and psychologically engaged. He saw closed texts—those limiting understanding to a single, unequivocal line—as less rewarding, while open texts, most active between mind, society, and life, were livelier and better, though valuation was not his main concern. He reached these views through language and semiotics, not psychology or historical analysis (as theorists like Wolfgang Iser or Hans Robert Jauss did). His 1964 book *Apocalittici e integrati* (The Apocalyptic and the Integrated) continued this exploration of popular culture.