131–137 of 137 posts
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Which is the direst critique one can address to any book! It's the book's (and author's) failure, not your own, to be incomprehensible and pedantic.
If a child cannot understand the scope and themes of, say, Montaigne's Essais, is this a fault of Montaigne's? The Pendulum is similarly loaded with concepts and ideas.
- This story claims it's a hoax: http://en.mediamass.net/people/umberto-eco/deathhoax.html "On Friday (February 19) the author's reps officially confirmed that Umberto Eco is not dead. “He joins the long list of celebrities who have been victimized by this hoax. He's still alive and well, stop believing what you see on the Internet,” they said." - Wikipedia reverted the notice of his death, saying it was a false rumo…
Mediamass is a parody site, similar to The Onion but not as funny. If you look on any of their articles, they contain a disclaimer, "UPDATE: This story appears to be false," which links to a page[1] explaining that everything is made up. [1]: http://en.mediamass.net/blog/mediamass-project
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I really doubt we know very much about how people thought back then. There are many filters between what was thought, who knew how to write it down, the form people used to express thought in written form, what happened to be copied or survive. Ex: People don't actually believe in Santa Clause, but if you randomly chose 10,000 pages to represent US thought from 1800 to now. Them handed them to scholars in the future…
You'd be surprised. Read Baudilino by Eco, which speaks to this precise point.
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It's not medieval philosophy, with "years after that conversation was set", the poster you're replying to means 600 years. The book should not be seen as an historic work.
Anachronistic quotations happened quite often in ancient and medieval writing, so Eco was just having a bit of fun. I agree that the Name of the Rose is not an historic work (incidentally so did Eco), but plenty of medievalists think that it is good enough to be a useful teaching tool: http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/fall-2009/postscr...
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That reminds me of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, on thanksgiving: Anya: I love a ritual sacrifice. Buffy: Not really a one of those. Anya: To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It's a ritual sacrifice. With pie.
It's funny how we consider certain cultural behaviors to be wildly different when they're "ours" versus "theirs" even if they're pretty similar if you can step back and observe them objectively. "If you used historical techniques on us, you'd get completely the wrong idea!" Maybe. Or maybe you'd finally get the right idea. I'd love to write more, but I've finished ingesting the stimulants that allow me to tolerate my…
So, you have one God, but also a demigod, who is his son. There's a god of the underworld you call satan, and a number of divine or demonic creatures called angels and demons. Ok, throw in some ancestor worship in the form of saints.
This monotheistic pantheon would have sounded reassuringly familiar your ancient Greek interlocutor.
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You'd be surprised. Read Baudilino by Eco, which speaks to this precise point.
I just pulled Baudolino back off the shelf this morning, going to try to make it through this time. I love the idea of the untrustworthy narrator, and the writing is excellent, though dense. like Foucault's Pendulum, I find Baudolino hard to read straight through, though I'm sure it will ultimately be just as rewarding.
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Interesting. Mind recommending someone else we ought to read instead?
I have read all of Eco's novels and enjoy his work very much. Other authors I like are Borges, Calvino, and Mulisch.