Add free shipping to your order with these great books
The Search for the Perfect Language : Making of Europe - Umberto Eco

The Search for the Perfect Language

By: Umberto Eco

Paperback | 8 April 1997

At a Glance

FREE SHIPPING

Paperback


Limited Stock Available

$116.95

or 4 interest-free payments of $29.24 with

 or 
In Stock and Aims to ship next day
The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. <br><p>From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. <br><p>The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. <br><p><br><p>To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a<i> tour de force</i> of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History.<br><p>The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.
Industry Reviews
"This is as much a history of the study of language and its origins as it is a tour de force pursuit using scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, thus providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European history." The Medieval Review

More in European History

Operation Biting - Max Hastings

RRP $37.99

$33.90

11%
OFF
Vertigo : The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany - Harald Jähner

RRP $36.99

$33.25

10%
OFF
Thorns, Lust and Glory : The betrayal of Anne Boleyn - Estelle Paranque
The Vanishing Point - Andrea Hotere

RRP $34.99

$31.75

The Republic : Penguin Classics - Plato

RRP $17.99

$17.25

Titanic - David Ross

FREE SHIPPING

Hardcover

RRP $45.99

$43.75

Russian Weapons of World War II - David Porter

FREE SHIPPING

RRP $45.99

$40.50

12%
OFF
Wake Up : Why the World has Gone Nuts - Piers Morgan

RRP $49.99

$15.82

68%
OFF
Paris 1924 - Nicholas Whitlam

FREE SHIPPING

Paperback

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
The Last Secret of the Secret Annex - Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl

RRP $34.99

$31.35

10%
OFF
Black People in the British Empire - Peter Fryer

FREE SHIPPING

RRP $32.99

$29.75

10%
OFF
Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen - Rory Muir

RRP $51.95

$39.25

24%
OFF
Secondhand Time : The Last of the Soviets - Svetlana Alexievich
The Chancellor : The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel - Kati Marton
Rum : A Distilled History of Colonial Australia - Matt Murphy
The Plantagenets : The Kings Who Made England - Dan Jones

Popular Searches