More than twenty years after its original appearance in Italian,
"The Open Work" remains significant for its powerful concept of
"openness"--the artist's decision to leave arrangements of some
constituents of a work to the public or to chance--and for its
striking anticipation of two major themes of contemporary literary
theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the
insistence on literary response as an interactive process between
reader and text. The questions Umberto Eco raises, and the answers
he suggests, are intertwined in the continuing debate on
literature, art, and culture in general.
This entirely new edition, edited for the English-language
audience with the approval of Eco himself, includes an
authoritative introduction by David Robey that explores Eco's
thought at the period of "The Open Work," prior to his absorption
in semiotics. The book now contains key essays on Eco's mentor
Luigi Pareyson, on television and mass culture, and on the politics
of art. Harvard University Press will publish separately and
simultaneously the extended study of James Joyce that was
originally part of "The Open Work," entitled "The Aesthetics of
Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce," "The Open Work" explores
a set of issues in aesthetics that remain central to critical
theory, and does so in a characteristically vivid style. Eco's
convincing manner of presenting ideas and his instinct for the
lively example are threaded compellingly throughout. This book is
at once a major treatise in modern aesthetics and an excellent
introduction to Eco's thought.
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