On Literature

by Umberto Eco · 2002

A collection of Eco's occasional essays and lectures on literature, ranging from Dante's Paradiso and Aristotle's Poetics to his own novels, tracing the social functions of literature, the practice of intertextual irony, and his personal debts to writers like Borges.

Books mentioned in On Literature (46)

• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce: Cited as a work that influenced scientists' imagination of the universe
• Poetics by Aristotle: “discussed at length as the foundational text of Western literary theory”
• The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni: “Manzoni's The Betrothed was also a best seller”
• Ulysses by James Joyce: “discussed as based on Aristotle's Rhetoric and analyzed repeatedly”
• Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann: “"the model of Mann's Doctor Faustus was fundamental" to The Name of the Rose”
• Being and Time by Martin Heidegger: “compared to The Waste Land's dating”
• Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “referenced as translated by a character”
• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges: “In 1955 Borges's Ficciones came out in Italy”
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco: “discussed extensively as Eco's own novel, including its library and Borges influence”
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: “analyzed via Poe's Philosophy of Composition”
• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges: “discussed regarding Borges and the Rosicrucians”
• The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges: “the poetics of The Aleph, that magic object...”
• Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott: “quoted at length as an example”
• Ethics by Baruch Spinoza: “discussed as an example of finding a story in a plotless text”
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: “discussed extensively, including as e-book reading example”
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “discussed as an example of e-book reading and Pierre Menard's rewriting”
• The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco: “Eco's own novel, discussed for its coups-de-scène modeled on Dumas”
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: “cited alongside Little Red Riding-Hood and Ulysses as fictional individuals”
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: “discussed as an example of naive vs. critical reading”
• The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: “discussed and dated relative to Heidegger's Being and Time”
• Death and the Compass by Jorge Luis Borges: “I cannot rule out the possibility that... I was influenced by the plot of his 'Death and the Compass'”
• In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka: “discussed regarding detail and suggestion in narrative technique”
• On the Sublime by Longinus: “discussed as continuing Aristotle's lesson on poetic effect”
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: “essay written for its 150th anniversary, analyzing its literary style”
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: “Let us reread The Picture of Dorian Gray”
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: “discussed as an example of reading suspense despite knowing the outcome”
• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne: “referenced regarding the international date line”
• Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais: “Eco recalls reading an abbreviated version as a child”
• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles: “cited alongside Aquinas's definition of beauty”
• The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue: “discussed with the character Rudolph of Gerolstein migrating from it”
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: “'Anna Karenina commits suicide' will remain true for eternity”
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: “quoted directly for its aphorisms”
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville: “discussed as an example of literary lessons resisting simplification”
• Billy Budd by Herman Melville: Cited as an eternal literary fact: "Billy Budd hanged"
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: “the ending is quoted and discussed as a possible stopgap”
• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: “its opening lines are quoted and analyzed”
• Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “cited for its digressive staircase scene spanning three chapters”
• Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant: “contrasted with Kant's Critique of Judgment on aesthetics”
• Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler: “used as an example in a discussion of the paradox of material implication”
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco: “discussed extensively, including its Rosicrucian research and character Casaubon”
• Baudolino by Umberto Eco: “mentioned as written in Winword, and its origins traced to an earlier lecture on forgeries”
• The Order of Things by Michel Foucault: “I had read The Order of Things when it came out in 1966”
• Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert: “Eco says he thought a lot about Flaubert's book while writing Foucault's Pendulum”
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann: “critics saw an allusion to its Naphta-Settembrini dialogues in The Name of the Rose”
• The Book of Kells: “discussed at length in connection with Joyce's Finnegans Wake”
• Corpus Hermeticum: “referenced regarding the character name Casaubon in Foucault's Pendulum”