Serendipities

Language And Lunacy

By: Umberto Eco

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Paperback | 2 April 2024 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

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176 Pages

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1.2 x 13 x 19.7

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The extraordinary historical consequences of errors and fictional inventions.

SERENDIPITIES is an iconoclastic, dazzlingly erudite and witty demonstration, by one of the world''s most brilliant thinkers, of how myths and lunacies can produce historical developments of no small significance. In Eco''s words, ''even errors can produce interesting side effects''. Eco''s book shows how:

-- believers in a flat earth helped Columbus accidentally discover America
-- the medieval myth of Prester John, the Christian king in Asia, assisted the European drive eastward
-- the myth of the Rosicrucians affected the Masons, leading in turn to the widespread belief in a Jewish masonic plot to dominate the world and other forms of paranoid anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Industry Reviews

"Examines, with wit and elegance, some of the many cases in which a mistaken belief has led to a sound result . . . Delightful."-The Atlantic Monthly "Rich in historical anecdotes . . . Throughout, his treatments are informative, intellectually sophisticated, and thoroughly entertaining."-Library Journal

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preface	p. vii
Serendipities	p. 0
The Force of Falsity	p. 1
Languages in Paradise	p. 23
From Marco Polo to Leibniz Stories of Intellectual Misunderstandings	p. 53
The Language of the Austral Land	p. 75
The Linguistics of Joseph de Maistre	p. 95
Notes	p. 115
Index	p. 119
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Serendipities

Language And Lunacy

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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