The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay |  | Author: Umberto Eco
Creator: Alastair McEwen
Publisher: Rizzoli
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
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Sales Rank: 18964
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 408
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.8 x 1.2
ISBN: 0847832961
Dewey Decimal Number: 709
EAN: 9780847832965
ASIN: 0847832961
Publication Date: November 17, 2009
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| • | ISBN13: 9780847832965 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Best-selling author and philosopher Umberto Eco is currently resident at the Louvre, and his chosen theme of study is "the vertigo of lists." Reflecting on this enormous trove of human achievements, in his lyrical intellectual style he has embarked on an investigation of the phenomenon of cataloging and collecting. This book, featuring lavish reproductions of artworks from the Louvre and other world-famous collections, is a philosophical and artistic sequel to Eco’s recent acclaimed books, History of Beauty and On Ugliness, books in which he delved into the psychology, philosophy, history, and art of human forms. Eco is a modern-day Diderot, and here he examines the Western mind’s predilection for list-making and the encyclopedic. His central thesis is that in Western culture a passion for accumulation is recurring: lists of saints, catalogues of plants, collections of art. This impulse has recurred through the ages from music to literature to art. Eco refers to this obsession itself as a "giddiness of lists" but shows how in the right hands it can be a "poetics of catalogues." From medieval reliquaries to Andy Warhol’s compulsive collecting, Umberto Eco reflects in his inimitably inspiring way on how such catalogues mirror the spirit of their times.
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| Customer Reviews:
A List of Lists, Using Lists as Examples January 16, 2010
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In a lavishly illustrated collection of art, Umberto Eco (//The Name of the Rose//) uses mostly Classical pieces to explore the concept of lists, catalogs, and those that create them. He moves from the differences between lists and catalogs to the various forms of lists--practical and poetic. The practical list is one with a purpose, a shopping list, a guest list, a inventory of items, whereas a poetic list is one that evokes a feeling, a sense of time, place or mystery--Homer's list of ships in the //Illiad// are less necessary as an accurate list, but more to create the overwhelming feel of unity and strength in the Greek invasion of Troy. //The Infinity of Lists// is a product of Eco's residency at the Louvre, where he organized several conferences and exhibitions on the subject of lists and list makers.
Eco takes a subject and after a brief essay provides reproductions of art and text to illustrate his thesis. In the chapter "Lists of Places" he name drops a number of quick references of authors and artists that used lists to illustrate their subjects--James Joyce in //Finnegans Wake// with lists of rivers--and then excerpts from texts illustrated by multiple full-color illustrations. "Places" includes a list of countries from the Book of Ezekiel, part of Chapter 1 of Dickens' //Bleak House//, and Edgar Allan Poe's description of members of a crowd from "The Man of the Crowd." //Lists// is less a book to be read cover to cover, and more one to sample, moving from illustration to essay. The hundreds of illustrations range from mosaics of antiquity to recent modern art, as does the text. While Eco doesn't adequately survey much of the modern world, "the Mother of all Lists," as he calls the Internet, only gets a single paragraph; his primary focus of Classic to Renaissance art and list-making is meat enough for hours of additional research (probably using the Mother of all Lists) and enjoyment.
Reviewed by Ross Rojek
Eco's Latest Literary Trend November 19, 2009
Alex Broudy (State College, PA)
19 out of 27 found this review helpful
In 2007 Bompiani published a similar non-fiction work by Umberto Eco, "Dall'Albero al Labrinto: Studi Storici sul Segno e l'Interpretazione," that investigated the histories of sign and interpretation alongside the history of encyclopedistics. Its aim was to more fully examine organization as a human phenomenon. "The Infinity of Lists," I believe, continues this examination by identifying the nature of lists across time. In short, Eco appears to be following a particular trend with his recent research - one that explores our immense fascination with the organization of content and its many forms.
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