born Jan. 5, 1932, Alessandria, Italy
Italian critic and novelist.
He has taught since 1971 at the University of Bologna. In The Open Work (1962), he suggested that some literature and modern music is fundamentally ambiguous and invites the audience to participate in the interpretive and creative process. He explored other areas of communication and semiotics in A Theory of Semiotics (1976), Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984), and The Limits of Interpretation (1991). His novels include the erudite but best-selling murder mystery The Name of the Rose (1980; film, 1986), Foucault's Pendulum (1988), and The Island of the Day Before (1995).