Volume 2015, Issue 206 - Special Issue: Umberto Eco’s interpretative semiotics: Interpretation, encyclopedia, translation, Guest Editors: Cinzia Bianchi and Clare Vassallo

The aim of the essay is to link Eco’s theory of the Encyclopedia as regulative hypothesis with his theory of interpretation, by evidencing the intrinsic dynamic character of the encyclopedic model. Eco adopts Peirce’s view of semiosis as a flow of interpretants, but the notion of semantic model is not to be found in the work of the American. Eco is thus attracted by the challenge of combining the process-based model of interpretation and the formal model of semantic system. The attempt meets with some difficulties due to the difference between the two approaches. Yet, it is argued that this attempt opens a fascinating landscape to future research.

This paper discusses the role of the reader as developed by Umberto Eco in numerous instances: Lector in fabula (1979), I limiti dell’interpretazione (1990, The Limits of Interpretation), Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992) and Dire quasi la stessa cosa (2003, Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation). According to Eco, the interpretation of a text implies the grasping of the intentio operis by way of the intentio lectoris. Yet, the question to be asked is: what is the intentio operis and how can it be known? This is especially cogent since such intention is not explicit at the superficial level of the text but, rather, by way of various clues and suggestions that are disseminated throughout the text that the reader is actively involved in recognizing while eventually developing a specific interpretation of the text itself.

This essay develops the multiple “passional” implications implied within every act of reading. Texts have the potential power to elicit the passions of the reader through various textual strategies that, in turn, enable the reader to become emotionally or passionally involved in the narration and, furthermore, to share in the emotions of the characters. The second part of this essay presents a reading of a story by Friedrich Durrenmatt, “The Dying of the Pythia,” which appeared not long before Eco’s work, Lector in Fabula, 1979.

This essay deals directly with the issues of meaning, language use, and communication as they connect with the concept of Encyclopedia. It provides an in-depth investigation into linguistic understanding as an interpretative process and not as a simple passage of information. This reading coincides with various studies in pragmatics, as well as with recent research in more narrowly linguistic fields.

This essay traces the evolution of Umberto Eco’s thinking from a particular point of view, that of his reflections on ideology and ideological discourse. The reason for this choice is that ideology is one of the themes that is associated with the mature phase of Eco’s work, generally regarded as beginning with the Trattato di semiotica generale (1975, A Theory of Semiotics). Moreover, by examining ideology it is possible to piece together a complex path of intellectual reconsiderations and redefinitions involving both the discipline of semiotics and the broader cultural context. To tackle this topic it is in fact necessary to refer both to the general ambit of Eco’s semiotics and the historic and cultural context in which these studies originated.

This paper focuses on the main features and evolution of the so-called “debate on iconism,” in which Eco was deeply involved. This discussion (one of the most important in general and visual semiotics) began at the end of the 1960s and dealt with the problem of reality and image perception. It was characterized by the contrast between the supporters of visual language “naturality” and those of its “conventionality.” In La Struttura assente (1968) and Trattato di semiotica generale (1975, A Theory of Semiotics ), Eco elaborated a moderate conventionalist theory. More than 20 years later, in Kant e l’ornitorinco (1997, Kant and the Platypus ), he focused his attention on the link between reality and visual language. The article aims to understand what has really changed in Eco’s theory and how far the reflections in Kant e l’ornitorinco were already implied in his first ideas. Besides, the article underlines the importance of perceptive modalities theory, Eco’s most recent contribution to visual semiotics.

Jakobson’s famous classification of three types of translation is the point of departure for a discussion of “translation proper,” or translation from one natural historical language to another. Eco’s comparison of the terms interpretation and translation show that they overlap but are not synonymous as there is a limit to translation that does not hold for interpretation. A translation strategy that aims for equivalent effect is guided by the intentio operis as well as by the regulative hypothesis of the encyclopedia, which takes into account the inferential and pragmatic conditions of communication that are implied but not explicit in the text. The paper compares insights from what has been called the “cultural turn” in Translation Studies with Eco’s regulative hypothesis of the Encyclopedia as a dynamic interpretative strategy.

This paper draws on Jakobson’s tripartite division of the notion of translation, and Eco’s discussion of the terms in his book on translation, Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation (2003b). It focuses specifically on the issue of intersemiotic translation, questioning and showing what it means to “translate” from one “language” to another, such as from the novel to the medium of film, and to what extent the term translation is used metaphorically or whether it is semantically extended to include a broader notion of translation than that between natural languages.