Author: Cristina Farranato<br />File Type: pdf<br />While Umberto Ecos intellectual itinerary was marked by his early studies of post-Crocean aesthetics and his spectacular concentration on linguistics, information theory, structuralism, semiotics, cognitive science, and media studies, what constitutes the peculiarity of his critical and fiction writing is the tension between a typically medieval search for a code and the hermeneutic representative of deconstructive tendencies. This tension between cosmos and chaos, order and disorder, is reflected in the word chaosmos.In this brilliant assessment of the philosophical basis of Ecos critical and fictional writing, Cristina Farronato explores the other distinctive aspect of Ecos thought - the struggle for a composition of opposites, the outcome deriving from his ability to elicit similar contrasts from the past and re-play them in modern terms. Focusing principally on how Ecos scholarly background influenced his study of semiotics, Farronato analyzes The Name of the Rose in relation to William of Ockhams epistemology, C.S. Peirces work on abduction, and Wittgensteins theory of language. She discusses Foucaults Pendulum as an explicit comment on the modern debate on interpretation through a direct reference to Early Modern hermetic thought, correlates The Island of the Day Before as a postmodern mixture of science and superstition, and reviews Baudolino as an historicalfantastic novel that once again situates the Middle Ages in a postmodern context. Ecos Chaosmos demonstrates how Ecos use of semiotic theory is important for an understanding of the postmodern aspects of todays literature and culture.**