SOURCE: “Meditations on Terrorism and Other Signs of the Times,” in The Christian Science Monitor, May 14, 1986, p. 23.

D'Evelyn is general editor for the humanities at Harvard University Press. In the following review, he provides a thematic overview of Travels in Hyper Reality, drawing parallels between contemporary culture and that of the Middle Ages.

Umberto Eco's best-selling novel, The Name of the Rose, takes place in a Franciscan abbey in 14th-century Italy. Now we have a collection of essays [Travels in Hyper Reality] by Eco, essays written in the last 20 years for the popular press, and it turns out that his familiarity with medieval times helps him discover some illuminating and disturbing parallels with our own.

It should be noted first that Eco is by profession a semiologist, a student of signs. He teaches at the University of Milan. A semiologist studies not only language but cultural phenomena of...