Full Description
"...not merely interesting and novel, but also exceedingly provocative and heuristically fertile." -The Review of Metaphysics "...essential reading for anyone interesting in...the new reader-centered forms of criticism." -Library Journal In this erudite and imaginative book, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between 'open' and 'closed' texts.
Contents
Preface Introduction: The Role of the Reader I. Open 1. The Poetics of the Open Work 2. The Semantics of Metaphor 3. On the Possibility of Generating Aesthetic Messages in an Edenic Language II. Closed 4. The Myth of Superman 5. Rhetoric and Ideology in Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris 6. Narrative Structures in Fleming III. Open/Closed 7. Peirce and the Semiotic Foundations of Openness: Signs as Texts and Texts as Signs 8. Lector in Fabula: Pragmatic Strategy in a Metanarrative Text Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Bibliography