SOURCE: “The Reasons of the Code: Reading Eco's A Theory of Semiotics,” in Cultural Semiosis: Tracing the Signifier, edited by Hugh J. Silverman, Routledge, 1998, pp. 23-47.

In the following essay, Carravetta explicates the rationale, the method, and the aesthetics of the interpretive strategy described in A Theory of Semiotics.

Umberto Eco's A Theory of Semiotics¹ is widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive treatments of semiosis.² It is also a turning point in Eco's itinerary through various forms of interpretive thought.³ Moreover, in the history and development of semiotics in Italy, Eco's opus is a milestone, a historiographical moment of consolidation as well as a compass needle that locates paths and sets agendas for subsequent study.⁴ After a necessarily compressed synthesis of some fundamental tenets of A Theory of Semiotics, I propose to study three specific aspects:

First, how the theory qua Theory is actually constructed, taking...