Interpretation and Overinterpretation: World, History, Texts

UMBERTO ECO was born in Piedmont, Italy, in 1932, and studied philosophy at the University of Turin. In addition to holding appointments at the Universities of Turin, Milan, and Florence, he has also worked for Italian television. Since 1975 he has been Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna. He is the author of over a dozen books on semiotics, literary theory, and cultural criticism as well as the best-selling novel The Name of the Rose (1980) and, most recently, Foucault’s Pendulum (1989).