Travels in Hyper Reality: Essays

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1986 - Fiction - 307 pages

"A scintillating collection of writings by one of the most influential thinkers of our times." --Los Angeles Times

With the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco entertains and intrigues once again, this time on subjects ranging from pop culture to philosophy, from the People's Temple to Thomas Aquinas, from Casablanca to Roland Barthes. Acute, ironic, and often very funny, these timeless essays open up fresh worlds of possibility and new frameworks of existence. A classic work.

"Eco combines scholarship with a love of paradox and a quirky, sometimes outrageous, sense of humor." --The Atlantic

"Amusing and often brilliant." --John Updike, The New Yorker

 

Contents

THE RETURN OF THE MIDDLE AGES
59
THE GODS OF THE UNDERWORLD
87
REPORTS FROM THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
133
Two Families of Objects
183
Lumbar Thought
191
Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage
197
A Photograph
213
DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE
219
A THEORY OF EXPOSITIONS
289
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About the author (1986)

Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria, Italy on January 5, 1932. He received a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Turin in 1954. His first book, Il Problema Estetico in San Tommaso, was an extension of his doctoral thesis on St. Thomas Aquinas and was published in 1956. His first novel, The Name of the Rose, was published in 1980 and won the Premio Strega and the Premio Anghiar awards in 1981. In 1986, it was adapted into a movie starring Sean Connery. His other works include Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Prague Cemetery, and Numero Zero. He also wrote children's books and more than 20 nonfiction books including Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. He taught philosophy and then semiotics at the University of Bologna. He also wrote weekly columns on popular culture and politics for L'Espresso. He died from cancer on February 19, 2016 at the age of 84.