Seven years ago, on 19 February 2016, the world mourned the passing of the novelist, semiotician, philosopher, medievalist Umberto Eco, widely considered one of Italy’s foremost thinkers, author of several essays and novels, including the multi-award-winning The Name of the Rose.
To honour his memory we have lovingly restored a treasure trove from our archives: the recording of a conversation between Umberto Eco and the late Michael Caesar, chaired by David Robey, which took place here at our Institute on 21 May 1999, then directed by Benedetta Bini, on the occasion of the publication of Eco’s book Serendipity by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
You can watch the video HERE
UMBERTO ECO
Born in Alessandria in 1932 Eco was a prolific philosopher, medievalist, semiologist, and cultural critic. His first novel, the historical mystery Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), won him the prestigious Strega prize, and he went on to publish several other novels as well as essays. Serendipities, originally published in English in 1998, is a collection of essays about the history of linguistics and the concept of a perfect language. He was Emeritus Professor at the University of Bologna, where he’d been a professor since 1975.
MICHAEL CAESAR
Emeritus Professor at the University of Birmingham, Professor Caesar graduated in Modern Languages at Cambridge. He became chair Italian at Birmingham in 1994, where he was head of department from 1994 to 2002 and from 2005 to 2008. His teaching and research interests in Italian Studies have ranged from the reception of Dante since the Middle Ages to contemporary literature and the work of Umberto Eco, with a strong research focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
DAVID ROBEY
Emeritus Professor at the University of Reading, David Robey graduated from Oxford in Modern Languages in 1966 and was appointed university lecturer in Italian there. From 1989 he worked at the University of Manchester, as professor of Italian and Dean of the Arts Faculty. He moved back to Reading in 1998 as Professor of Italian and Head of the Department, then Head of the School of Modern Languages, finally its Research Director. From 2003 to 2008 Robey directed the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme.