The Study Of Eco’s Text Hermeneutics Theory

Umberto Eco, a famous Italian semiotist, esthete, literary theorist and novelist, has made great contribution in various fields. In abroad, the study of Eco started early and has already made a rich harvest, while in the domestic, the thought of Eco has not been paid much attention. Besides, researchers mainly focused on a specific aspect, which lacked of multiple perspectives, comprehensive and profound research. The thesis tries to study and discuss an important part of Eco’s theory, that is, the text hermeneutics theory. Unlike the past research, we’ll provide a new thinking and research method. On the basis of rationally interpret and comment of Eco’s thought, the thesis intends to figure out the origin of Eco’s hermeneutics theory, grasp its entire development process and predict its future trend. What’s more, by means of the macroscopic study and microscopic analysis, we make our best to find the relationship among Eco’s hermeneutics theory, semiotics theory, aesthetics and the literature practice. According to combine hermeneutics theory and writing practice, we are able to reveal the advantage and disadvantage of the theory, thus we can totally grasp the overall recognition of the theory.The article consists of eight parts. Introduction part first introduces the achievement of Eco, then explains the study significance, analyzes the study situation and outlines the structure and the main innovation of the thesis. Chapter one above all combs the aesthetics thought of Thomas Aquinas, Joyce and Pareyson, then analyzes their influence on Eco through form theory and explanation theory, and next finds out the connection between Eco’s hermeneutics theory and his own aesthetics thought. Chapter two elaborates Eco’s semiotics theory. This part explores the semiotics thought of Saussure, L.Hjelmslev and Pierce, Eco’s semiotics theory absorbs their thought and mainly combines L.Hjelmslev’s symbols of binary with Pierce’s semiotic theory of ternary. We finally find out the source of Eco’s open hermeneutics and over interpretation theory according to the comparison of Pierce’s unlimited semiotics and mysticism drifted semiotics. Chapter three explores Eco’s hermeneutics theory. It can be summarized by three points:advocating interpretation, objecting over interpretation, and emphasizing interpretation boundary. Chapter four underlines the concept of over interpretation. Eco criticizes over interpretation through the debate among Rorty and Culler, he suggests that we can limit infinite explanations by text intention. Chapter five emphasizes the research and assessment of text intention, Eco insists the role of text intention, model reader and model author in the process of text interpretation. Chapter six evaluates Eco’s novels. In this chapter we combine his hermeneutics theory and practical novel writing, and then verify the theory from the view of practice. At the last is the summary of the thesis. In this part we mainly summarize and evaluate Eco’s hermeneutics theory, including the advantages and innovations of the theory, the defects of the theory, the values and significances of the theory.In all, this thesis tries to collect, collate, read and use the original English material in order to reduce the misreading of Eco’s hermeneutics theory, so that we can understand and analyze it accurately. On one side, we are not limited to the analysis the hermeneutics theory; instead, the theory includes semiotics, aesthetics, novel writing and other thoughts. On the other side, combining the theory and practice provides a good opportunity to rethink our domestic construction of contemporary hermeneutics theory and practice.