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KANT AND THE PLATYPUS

Name: KANT AND THE PLATYPUS
Author: Umberto Eco
ISBN: 0-15-100447-1

ESSAYS ON LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

by Umberto Eco & translated by Alastair McEwen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999

A substantial volume that makes a case for Eco’s novels as window-dressing, and his scholarship as the real thing.

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All (and probably more than) you ever wanted to know about how cognitive linguistics and semiotics have risen to the challenge of Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philosophy.

Before he became a best-selling novelist (The Name of the Rose, 1983, etc.), globe-trotting intellectual (Serendipities, 1998, etc.), and media darling, Eco was a linguist and semiotician, and it is to this academic discipline that he returns in this collection, first published in Italy in 1997. In other words, don’t be fooled by his characteristically playful title. As the more revealing subtitle suggests, what Eco offers this time is a set of erudite and interrelated studies for highly specialized scholars. The essays are even broken up into numbered divisions and subdivisions, in the style of a German habilitation. Eco wrote these pieces in order to explore and redefine some of the loose ends left dangling in his much-praised Theory of Semiotics (1976). The good professor writes as lucidly as ever; McEwan’s translation is both fluent and exact; but Eco here, making assumptions and demands more characteristic of academic presses than trade hardbacks, takes for granted a working knowledge of the basic developments in the discipline of semiotics since the late 1960s which will exclude a good deal of his customary audience. For those with the price of admission, however, Eco offers a great deal. In a concise, intellectually aggressive, and lucidly penetrating survey, he considers fundamental questions that have arisen in the course of his impressive scholarly career: How do we understand our always strange world – symbolized here by his eponymous platypus – in and through language? Why do we arrange dissimilar objects like cats and beetles into larger groups, and what happens when we do? Above all, what is the relation between language and cognition?

A substantial volume that makes a case for Eco’s novels as window-dressing, and his scholarship as the real thing.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-15-100447-1

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
by Umberto Eco ; translated by Alastair McEwen

- BOOK REVIEW
CHRONICLES OF A LIQUID SOCIETY
by Umberto Eco ; translated by Richard Dixon

- BOOK REVIEW
NUMERO ZERO
by Umberto Eco ; translated by Richard Dixon

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.