A Study On The Literary And ArtisticThought Of Eco

Umberto Eco (1932- ) is a famous contemporary Italian philosopher, semiotist, literary theorist and novelist. He,who has the profound knowledge and the wise and farsighted thoughts,has a unique contribution to the field of philosophy, aesthetics, religion, history and literature theory, which has the profound influence until now. Much study of Eco has been carried out abroad and a rich harvest has been reaped. While in China the research of him is not in full swing. The literary and artistic thought of Eco has not been paid much attention to enough in the domestic. Besides Eco which's translated related work, merely pauses to his research in articles and in the important theory viewpoints quotation. These research results have the limitation which only focused on Eco's semiotic theory or the novel. Researches about Eco's thought undertaken by futurity primarily adopt a specific, descriptive approach. This approach bears some quality of particularity but loses the global sketch of Eco's aesthetic thought, hence an inaccurate evaluation on the importance of his status in history of thought in the west, let alone his influence to west aesthetics.The thesis tries to improve the situation by giving an objective an overall description of Eco's literary and artistic thought. Adopting"chasing layers step-by-step"method, the author analyzes the backgrounds, clarifies the conceptions and straightens the relationships of the thoughts. The thesis is intended to rationally interpret and comment Eco's thought, along with his creative practice and theoretical criticism. Combining the methods of theoretical analysis and testimony of objective materials, this dissertation begin with the monographic study on Eco, which will make the frame of his whole ideas. By the means of the macroscopic panoramic investigation and the microscopic painstaking analysis, this dissertation also has the microscopic analysis of Eco's thoughts of the internal organizational structure, semiotics theory, hermeneutics theory and the literature practice in the base of his works in order to study Eco's thought in the multi-dimensional level. This dissertation has used the approaches of vertical research and lateral comparison to make the development of Eco's thought more distinct. Besides, the approaches of inter-interpretations between his theory and works are necessary, the dissertation study Eco's thoughts by the means of analyzing his novels with his theory to avoid over-interpretation for departing from the authorial intention.At present, it is the first time to have an over-all study of Eco's literary and artistic thought in a doctoral dissertation and there are many bigger breakthroughs in utilizing relative English materials as well. Therefore, the dissertation attempts to present the frame of Eco's thought more comprehensively and systemically in domestic to evaluate the importance of Eco status in history of thought inaccurately. The dissertation analysis Eco's thought about semiotics theory, hermeneutics theory and the novels creation in order to provide the platform of communicating and the light of learning. The dissertation made a try to discuss Eco's thoughts comprehensively, broking the limitation of research at present which only focused on Eco's some ideas or novels to make the people understand the value of the classical thinkers and in this meaning, the dissertation is beneficial to the further development of Eco's research and make a explosive step on the traditional research.The dissertation consists of six parts.Introduction.It gives a survey of the values of Eco's ideas and great importance attached to them in the West. While in China the study of him is very limited, and the current situation of the research is also described. Constrained by lack of studying materials and being short of attention have a demand of new thinking in studying Eco. Besides, the aims, approaches, new ideas and the structure of the dissertation are given in this part to provide the platform of research.Chapter one deals with the social and cultural environments of Eco's literary and artistic thought, and analysis the origin of Eco's ideas and explores the development process of his thoughts. This part is the base of the dissertation and the premise of understanding Eco's thought. Chapter two explores Eco's semiotics theory. This part analysis the theory of the symbol, the code and the ideas about production of symbol to show and scrutinize the frame of Eco's semiotics theory and its the value.Eco's semiotics theory absorbed the thought of Saussure and Pierce-two major semiotics School, taking the eclectic position of the meaning of semiotics and communication, structuralism and behaviorism.His semiotics theory is combined L. Hjelmslev's smultiple symbols of binary with Pierce's Semiotic theory of ternary,using the general principles of the code replaces the narrow structure of the language to explain the symbols and the production process of the symbol, reveals the nature of symbols, forms an open semiotics theory. The theory about symbol code and the production of symbols are the important part of Eco's semiotics theory, which correspond to the system of symbolic's meaning and the exchange, the coding system highlights the factors of context and the process of manifestation conveys the exchange process.Eco's semiotic theory gave the continuous production capacity to the code, allowed to exist with the features of the sign-function,displays the social function of symbols, but also for the social communication system provides an important expression, so that the semiotic theory steering to research the typology about modes of production, opened up a path of dynamic semiotics.Eco's semiotic theory is the open theory of semiotics which combined synchronic research with diachronic research and static analysis with dynamic analysis, making the theory of linguistic signs extrapolated to other non-linguistic and cultural systems. It made the language, culture, literature combined with each other and thus to a large extent made up for in the past, literary studies and cultural studies inadequate, and thus created a new situation of literary studies and cultural studies.Chapter three analysis Eco's hermeneutics theory.Eco's hermeneutics theory is attached to his semiotics research, so this part is parallel study with chapter two. They are monographic study of analysis Eco's thought. This part explores Eco's theory of interpretation and over interpretation.Eco's hermeneutics theory can be summarized by three points: Advocating interpretation, objecting over interpretation and establishing the line of interpretation. In his view, the author, text, world and readers, these four elements of the interpretation formed a dynamic loop. Eco early advocated interpretation. His theory of "the open work" concerned about the openness of the work, paid attention to the importance of the appreciator and the recipient, emphasized the communication of the recipient and the work, which provided insight to later "Center of readers", played an important convergence role of the modern philosophy hermeneutics and reader-response criticism. Eco discontent in the late the extreme behavior of interpretation of the text in the background of post-modernist, so he objected over interpretation and advocated to inspect the interpretation from the combination of the author, text, world, readers. Eco believed that we should give the right of interpretation to the reader and make the intention of the text become the interpretation scale to establish the line of interpretation, trying to introduce the activity of interpretation to the legitimate scope, which can maintain a certain kind of balance between the authors and readers. Eco has always adhered to the "text" as its own hermeneutics theory's the position of the firm, appears to pre-and post-change point of view, but in reality it's developing in depth.Chapter four analysis Eco's novels creation.This part explores his literary and artistic thought further from the angle of art practice.The dual identity of the scholars and writers for Eco offers a unique space. As a scholar novelist, he spread the theory with his novel, and Eco used semiotics theory and hermeneutics theory consciously at the creation of the novels, which make his novels that have the rich flavor of the institute unique. On the other hand, as a novelist scholar, Eco interpreted the novel with his theory, and then challenged hermeneutics theory. In terms of the theoretical level, Eco think and renounce, from the function of the literature and the style, inspecting the current situation of literature and looking forward to the development trend of the literature. On the practical level, Eco made great effort mining the art of novel and opened up a new art space. His novels are distinctive in terms of the depth of thought, the style of content or the style of personality. On the one hand, he absorbed from the art approach of post-modernist, used the narrative strategies such as metafiction, anti-detective, and created a Carnival of text. On the other hand, Eco maintained a sober-minded, stick to the character of the intellectuals, and he does not indulge in the text of the game, so his work contains the philosophical thought and the critical realistic.Chapter five is the summary of the dissertation. This part gives a general evaluation of the status of Eco's literary and artistic thought in history, their worth and limitations by the approaches of vertical research and lateral comparison.After extensive deliberations, we can see that as a "coordinator" and "General", Eco developed coordination in a variety of sense, and broke one-sided position of the mind with open and integrated world view. By virtue of his semiotics theory and hermeneutics theory, Eco used a series of novels; get through the medieval and post-modern joints to provide us in post-modern trend with a response strategy. Thus, we inspect Eco's literary and artistic thought which has an important value and significance, not only for us provides a dynamic opportunity of understanding the development of western literary theory, but also for the domestic construction of contemporary literary theory have the enlightening significance.