Italian author and intellectual Umberto Eco died at 84 on Friday at his home in Milan, according to Italian media reports.
His Italian publisher, Bompiani, confirmed his death, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
He was best known for his 1980 historical mystery novel The Name of the Rose, which has been translated into more than 40 languages.
As a semiotician, Eco sought to interpret cultures through their signs and symbols, publishing more than 20 non-fiction books on these subjects.
Subjected to inquiry
He directed the school of human sciences at Bologna University, Europe’s oldest university and as a polyglot, he was also the honorary president of the International Centre of Semiotics and Cognitive Studies at the University of San Marino and a member of Unesco’s International Forum.
“Books are not meant to be believed but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means,” Eco had said once.
He was born on 5 January 1932 at Alessandria in the northern Italian region of Piedmont.
Medieval philosophy and literature
As a teenager, Eco wrote comic books and fantasy novels before studying Medieval philosophy and literature at the University of Turin. His thesis was published in 1956 as The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. During that period, Eco abandoned the Roman Catholic Church after a crisis of faith.
From 1956-1964 he worked as a cultural editor for television station RAI and became a lecturer at the University of Turin from 1956 to 1964
Eco founded the communications department at the University of San Marino in the 1980s.
Apart from The Name of the Rose, which was a best seller, he wrote also other famous novels such as Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before and The Prague Cemetery, while he had also wrote many academic texts, children’s books and essays.
