Introduction: Umberto Eco’s interpretative semiotics: Interpretation, encyclopedia, translation

This essay is an introduction to the main and diversified subjects covered by this special issue on Umberto Eco’s theory of semiotics. The essays seek to bring to a broader and variegated readership a discussion of Eco’s work as it pertains to broad spheres of human activity. In particular, these essays focus on the act of interpretation, on the formation of culture as a matrix of thought, of the perceptible and imperceptible acts of translation, and on the regulative theoretical hypothesis of the encyclopaedia. These essays address highly cogent issues in semiotic and cultural studies and reflect the debate which began in Bologna in the 1990s between Eco and some of his researchers and students, but which has not had sufficient impact abroad because of limited circulation outside national boundaries and the Italian language.