THE SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT LANGUAGE [SIGNED]

Eco, Umberto; Fentress, James [Translator]

ISBN 10: 0631174656 / ISBN 13: 9780631174653

Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, UK, 1995

About this Item

Large octavo, x, 385 pages. In Very Good minus condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Teal spine with white and pink lettering. Dust jacket wrapped in mylar. Mild shelfwear at head and tail of spine. Rubbing to front and back dust jacket covers with bumping to all edges. Moderate soiling and spotting to top edge of text block. Signed flat by Eco on title page. Shelved in case 10. 1368942. Shelved Dupont Bookstore. First English Language Edition, First Printing.

Seller Inventory # 1368942

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT LANGUAGE [SIGNED]
• Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, UK
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0631174656
• ISBN 13: 9780631174653
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Social Sciences
  • Dupont Circle
  • European History

About this title

Synopsis

The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history.

From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence.

The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority.

To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History.

The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

About the Author

Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria in 1932 and has been Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna since 1975 and the President of the International Center for Semiotic and Cognitive Studies at the Universityu of San Marino since 1988. His books include The Name of the Rose (1980), Foucault's Pendulum (1988) and the more recent works include Semiotics and Philosophy of Lanaguage (1984) and The Limits of Interpretation (1990).