On Literature

Translated from the Italian

by Martin McLaughlin

HARCOURT, INC.

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© 2002 RCS Libri S.p.A

English translation copyright © 2004 by Martin McLaughlin

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This is a translation of Sulla Letteratura.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eco, Umberto.

[Sulla letteratura. English]

On literature / Umberto Eco; translated from the Italian by

Martin McLaughlin.—1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-15-100812-4

1. Literature—History and criticism. I. Title.

PN85.E4313 2004

809—dc22 2004010664

ISBN 0-15-100812-4

Text set in AGaramond

Designed by Cathy Riggs

Printed in the United States of America

First U.S. edition

A C E G I K J H F D B

Contents

Introduction [>]

On Some Functions of Literature [>]

A Reading of the Paradiso [>]

On the Style of The Communist Manifesto [>]

The Mists of the Valois [>]

Wilde: Paradox and Aphorism [>]

A Portrait of the Artist as Bachelor [>]

Between La Mancha and Babel [>]

Borges and My Anxiety of Influence [>]

On Camporesi: Blood, Body, Life [>]

On Symbolism [>]

On Style [>]

Les Sémaphores sous la Pluie [>]

The Flaws in the Form [>]

Intertextual Irony and Levels of Reading [>]

The Poetics and Us [>]

The American Myth in Three Anti-American Generations [>]

The Power of Falsehood [>]

How I Write [>]

Introduction

This book gathers together a series of occasional writings, though all of them are concerned with the problem of literature. They are occasional in the sense that they were stimulated by the title of a conference, symposium, congress, or volume to which I had been invited to contribute. Sometimes being constrained by a theme (even though one clearly goes to conferences whose theme is closely linked to one's own interests) helps to develop a new thought, or simply to restate old ones.

All the pieces have been rewritten for this volume, sometimes abbreviated, sometimes expanded, sometimes trimmed of references that were too closely tied to the occasion. But I have not tried to hide this very quality, their occasional character.

The reader will be able to spot the return, in different essays, and perhaps even at some years' distance, of the same example or theme. This seems natural to me, since each one of us carries our own baggage of illustrative literary "places." And repetition (so long as it does not actually disturb the reader) serves to highlight these.

Some of these writings are also, or, rather, especially, autobiographical or autocritical, in the sense that I speak of my own activity not as a theorist but as a practicing writer. As a general rule I do not like to confuse the two roles, but sometimes it is necessary, in order to explain what one means by literature, to turn to one's own experience—at least in informal occasions like the majority of those in this book. Moreover, the genre of "statement of poetics" is one that is authorized by a venerable tradition.