Overview

In Umberto Eco's first novel, The Name of the Rose, Nicholas of Morimondo laments, We no longer have the learning of the ancients, the age of giants is past! To which the protagonist, William of Baskerville, replies: We are dwarfs, but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of those giants, and small though we are, we sometimes manage to see farther on the horizon than they. On the Shoulders of Giants is a collection of essays based on lectures Eco famously delivered at the Milanesiana Festival in Milan over the last fifteen years of his life. Previously unpublished, the essays explore themes he returned to again and again in his writing: the roots of Western culture and the origin of language, the nature of beauty and ugliness, the potency of conspiracies, the lure of mysteries, and the imperfections of art. Eco examines the dynamics of creativity and considers how every act of innovation occurs in conversation with a superior ancestor. In these playful, witty, and breathtakingly erudite essays, we encounter an intellectual who reads comic strips, reflects on Heraclitus, Dante, and Rimbaud, listens to Carla Bruni, and watches Casablanca while thinking about Proust. On the Shoulders of Giants reveals both the humor and the colossal knowledge of a contemporary giant.

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9781690514053

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Umberto Eco (1932-2016) was an internationally acclaimed writer, philosopher, medievalist, and professor, well-known for his bestselling novels Foucault's Pendulum, The Name of the Rose, and The Prague Cemetery. A recipient of the Premio Strega, Italy's highest literary prize, he also was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities and a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur from the government of France. Alastair McEwen is an award-winning literary translator. After nearly forty years in Italy, he now lives in his native Scotland. Pete Cross earned his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and has been narrating audiobooks since 2015. He received an Audie nomination for 2016's A Time to Die. In 2017, he garnered both an Earphones Award and a Parent's Choice Award for his narration of Openly Straight. An Ohio native, he spent eight years in Los Angeles where he coached actors, was lucky enough to work with French director Quentin Dupieux, and despised the traffic.

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