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The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce
English (translation)Original Italian
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
17 people are currently reading
369 people want to read
About the author
Umberto Eco
948 books12k followersUmberto Eco was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory, as well as Foucault's Pendulum, his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes.
Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine L'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies.
Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine L'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 31, 2015
The only faith that the aesthetics and metaphysics of the Chaosmos leave us is the faith in Contradiction.
This is wicked erudite sort of study. One which left me behind almost constantly, but remained enthralling. I told a friend who recently suggested such that my greatest compliment for this volume is that it made me want to reread Ulysses.
This is wicked erudite sort of study. One which left me behind almost constantly, but remained enthralling. I told a friend who recently suggested such that my greatest compliment for this volume is that it made me want to reread Ulysses.
September 22, 2021
Solo un genio como Umberto Eco, con su sabiduría y su erudición puede darnos una acabada explicación de la obra de otro genio, James Joyce, desde el más primitivo, de "Dublineses", "Stephen el héroe y "Retrato del artista adolescente" hasta la complejidades más absolutas de "Ulises" y "Finnegans Wake", el libro más temido y resistido de leer en la literatura.
Un ensayo simplemente brillante que demuestra el poder de fuego literario que tenía Umberto Eco.
Un ensayo simplemente brillante que demuestra el poder de fuego literario que tenía Umberto Eco.
April 26, 2025
De inzichten in Joyce’s werk zijn vaak interessant en verhelderend.
De poging om ze samen te ballen in de these dat Joyce’s poëtica een middeleeuwse zou zijn doet geforceerd aan echter.
De poging om ze samen te ballen in de these dat Joyce’s poëtica een middeleeuwse zou zijn doet geforceerd aan echter.
July 21, 2018
Μόνο για όσους αντέχουν τα βιβλία του Τζόυς και για όσους αντέχουν τα δοκίμια του Έκο! Δηλαδή για γερά στομάχια ;)
https://pepperlines.blogspot.com/2018...
https://pepperlines.blogspot.com/2018...
March 14, 2020
When one is faced with an unquestionably great work, one is rarely rendered literally speechless; on the contrary, the verbal levee bursts open and the word salad simply pours out of the oesophagus. But unlike in a learned debate, where facts have been carefully rehearsed and the logic of the game glitters in its crystalline transparency, the descriptions and impressions elicited by a work of art are frequently epiphanic approximations and half-phonetic encomia that express the rapture yet not the rationale. When such words are reviewed later on, the meaning can still be gathered if the feelings are shared, but a plethora of new meanings are additionally detected, ever-changing in accordance with the reader.
When it comes to one of the world's most enigmatic and ingenious writers, to inwit, James Joyce, it's no wonder that detorrents of aralysis from desert-try acandemonium to rhapsottic pithylambics have saturated the vast plantations of literary critique. Among them is one U. Eco, whose outpourings are both divinely inspured and devilishly fentangled.
Overall, I'd say that Eco's main argument about the prevalence of the Middle Ages in Joyce's whole oeuvre is something of a failure. While the influence of Aquinas, Dante (though not expounded herein) and the Book of Kells can hardly be called to question by even the most skeptical demographic, the bulk of this treatise is spent on either fanatically attempting to express the inexpressible greatness of Joyce's mastery or instancing his influences who were not of medieval origin. It seems that Eco finds the presence of Order in Joyce's works as a definitive sign of the latter's predilection for the Middle Ages, yet in all honesty this could've come from anywhere! Same goes for the need for references (or auctoritates in Eco's terminology) or the impersonality of art. Nor does it help that Eco pretty much abandons his line of inquiry for pages on end, only to hastily draw some inferences later by pinpointing random characteristics as irrefragably medieval. Indeed, the reader barely has an inkling on what Eco even thinks as characteristically medieval! Later on in the chapter about Finnegans Wake, he does propound some key characteristics, like the difficulty of interpretation, aesthetical pleasure from long contemplation and a liking towards obscure communication, yet they come in way too late to impart confidence in the main thesis.
But this is easily overlooked, since Eco's theories and apophthegms about Joyce's body of work are nothing short of awe-inspiring. Whether they are his own or whether he simply communicates loads of other people's ideas, they directly express what Joyce's genius is truly about: his ability to go beyond words by means of words; to incorporate everything in merely something. Eco shows how Joyce sought, for example, to contain the chaos of Ulysses in epiphanic structures divided into numerous sections (each dedicated to divers elements, such as body parts and arts), or to contain the chaosmos of Finnegans Wake in a universe consisting of words, each providing a potential point of departure/arrival, thus breaking the univocity of interpretation and causality. This short work is teeming with palpably inspiring descriptions and summations of some of my favourite books, and it's no wonder that I felt a multifarious thrill upon reading it: I was in the company of another Joyce-adoring acolyte, someone who could express himself more powerfully than I, someone who implicitly encouraged me to draw my own inferences more and not to take even the most obvious-seeming things for granted*... someone whom I could positively gush about Joyce with! I felt simpiously exstatick!
Eco's writing is very difficult and sometimes unfortunately obscure, but what makes it all so beautiful is his careful deliberative attitude towards his analysis. His ideas might be thin at times, but they're at least properly fleshed out, in a way which I could only dream of achieving myself! And I think here's an important point about literary critique: the analysts never presume to offer the objective truth about the work; they merely wish to show how deeply they've drunk from the fountain of inspiration, and to what extent they can develop their afflatus. We need people like Eco to show that artists have bled for their work, have deliberated countless of hours over them and have achieved something far, far more tremendous than can be realised by simply reading through a book in a handful of days. People like Eco are/were here to instill humility in us admirers of art. Call them pretentious all you will, but in doing so, you'll only embarrass yourself by denying the possibility of development and discovery.
I'll end the review with a beautiful quote on Finnegans Wake. Gasp and enjoy:
[One] of the most implicit and explicit axioms of the Wake is that of the infinity of worlds, unified by a metamorphic nature of each word, the willingness of each etymon to immediately become something else and explode in new semantic directions.
*This can be exemplified by Eco's description of Bloom sitting in the jakes, crapping away. He described how Bloom's thinking coincides with his bowel movements. Well, initially, when I was reading Ulysses, I simply thought that here we're insinuating the act of defecation by subtle verbal means... but it never occurred to me that it could be considered as a merger of the physical and psychical events, thus solidifying the character of the language in Ulysses. With this interpretation, the language acquires a much more striking role in the whole book, and I'm simply dying to re-read the book with a new, fresher and more daring forma mentis.
When it comes to one of the world's most enigmatic and ingenious writers, to inwit, James Joyce, it's no wonder that detorrents of aralysis from desert-try acandemonium to rhapsottic pithylambics have saturated the vast plantations of literary critique. Among them is one U. Eco, whose outpourings are both divinely inspured and devilishly fentangled.
Overall, I'd say that Eco's main argument about the prevalence of the Middle Ages in Joyce's whole oeuvre is something of a failure. While the influence of Aquinas, Dante (though not expounded herein) and the Book of Kells can hardly be called to question by even the most skeptical demographic, the bulk of this treatise is spent on either fanatically attempting to express the inexpressible greatness of Joyce's mastery or instancing his influences who were not of medieval origin. It seems that Eco finds the presence of Order in Joyce's works as a definitive sign of the latter's predilection for the Middle Ages, yet in all honesty this could've come from anywhere! Same goes for the need for references (or auctoritates in Eco's terminology) or the impersonality of art. Nor does it help that Eco pretty much abandons his line of inquiry for pages on end, only to hastily draw some inferences later by pinpointing random characteristics as irrefragably medieval. Indeed, the reader barely has an inkling on what Eco even thinks as characteristically medieval! Later on in the chapter about Finnegans Wake, he does propound some key characteristics, like the difficulty of interpretation, aesthetical pleasure from long contemplation and a liking towards obscure communication, yet they come in way too late to impart confidence in the main thesis.
But this is easily overlooked, since Eco's theories and apophthegms about Joyce's body of work are nothing short of awe-inspiring. Whether they are his own or whether he simply communicates loads of other people's ideas, they directly express what Joyce's genius is truly about: his ability to go beyond words by means of words; to incorporate everything in merely something. Eco shows how Joyce sought, for example, to contain the chaos of Ulysses in epiphanic structures divided into numerous sections (each dedicated to divers elements, such as body parts and arts), or to contain the chaosmos of Finnegans Wake in a universe consisting of words, each providing a potential point of departure/arrival, thus breaking the univocity of interpretation and causality. This short work is teeming with palpably inspiring descriptions and summations of some of my favourite books, and it's no wonder that I felt a multifarious thrill upon reading it: I was in the company of another Joyce-adoring acolyte, someone who could express himself more powerfully than I, someone who implicitly encouraged me to draw my own inferences more and not to take even the most obvious-seeming things for granted*... someone whom I could positively gush about Joyce with! I felt simpiously exstatick!
Eco's writing is very difficult and sometimes unfortunately obscure, but what makes it all so beautiful is his careful deliberative attitude towards his analysis. His ideas might be thin at times, but they're at least properly fleshed out, in a way which I could only dream of achieving myself! And I think here's an important point about literary critique: the analysts never presume to offer the objective truth about the work; they merely wish to show how deeply they've drunk from the fountain of inspiration, and to what extent they can develop their afflatus. We need people like Eco to show that artists have bled for their work, have deliberated countless of hours over them and have achieved something far, far more tremendous than can be realised by simply reading through a book in a handful of days. People like Eco are/were here to instill humility in us admirers of art. Call them pretentious all you will, but in doing so, you'll only embarrass yourself by denying the possibility of development and discovery.
I'll end the review with a beautiful quote on Finnegans Wake. Gasp and enjoy:
[One] of the most implicit and explicit axioms of the Wake is that of the infinity of worlds, unified by a metamorphic nature of each word, the willingness of each etymon to immediately become something else and explode in new semantic directions.
*This can be exemplified by Eco's description of Bloom sitting in the jakes, crapping away. He described how Bloom's thinking coincides with his bowel movements. Well, initially, when I was reading Ulysses, I simply thought that here we're insinuating the act of defecation by subtle verbal means... but it never occurred to me that it could be considered as a merger of the physical and psychical events, thus solidifying the character of the language in Ulysses. With this interpretation, the language acquires a much more striking role in the whole book, and I'm simply dying to re-read the book with a new, fresher and more daring forma mentis.
March 22, 2016
вполне годные маргиналии к эстетике Джойса. глупо смотрится только заявление издателя о "максимально полном раскрытии универсума Джойса", поскольку эта довольно небольшая популярная лекция касается всего одной-двух граней эт-самого "универсума" - тех, что касаются средневековых корней.
первая глава, описывающая эстетику преимущественно Стивена, вновь переносит читателя примерно на первый курс филфака, однако это имеет смысл потерпеть, ибо без основ - осмысления эстетико-философских воззрений персонажа - будет не очень понятно, как и, главное, почему, Джойс пришел через Улисса к Финнеганам. так что читать стоит внимательно - Эко в этом смысле можно доверять, он обстоятельный.
вторая глава - об Улиссе, и в ней, в общем, не содержится ничего нового, чего вдумчивый читатель сам бы не увидел в тексте, но есть крайнее важное наблюдение о мире Джойса, которое выводит нас напрямую к миру Пинчона, и вот за него дважды краснознаменному барону Умберто от нас большое спасибо. а самое приятное - он не дает нам никаких рецептов и/или инструментов чтения Джойса, тем самым собственным авторитетом никак не сужая фильеру. в лучшем случае он может вполне околично описать лишь подходы к снаряду. но читать Джойса "по Эко" будет, пожалуй, невозможно - в немалой степени от того, что он лишь систематизатор, а не интерпретатор. но систематизирует он все, что касается наложения Джойсом "порядков" на мироздание, очень хорошо.
к третьей главе - о Финнеганах - вопросов больше (и к автору, и к переводчику, который иначе совершенно великолепен, но вот тут появляются какие-то мелкие глупости). хотя в целом читательское зрение его нас не связывает (но, в данном случае, и не помогает, что, видимо, по-любому было бы невозможно).
в общем, рекомендуется истинным фанатам (Джойса, не Эко)
первая глава, описывающая эстетику преимущественно Стивена, вновь переносит читателя примерно на первый курс филфака, однако это имеет смысл потерпеть, ибо без основ - осмысления эстетико-философских воззрений персонажа - будет не очень понятно, как и, главное, почему, Джойс пришел через Улисса к Финнеганам. так что читать стоит внимательно - Эко в этом смысле можно доверять, он обстоятельный.
вторая глава - об Улиссе, и в ней, в общем, не содержится ничего нового, чего вдумчивый читатель сам бы не увидел в тексте, но есть крайнее важное наблюдение о мире Джойса, которое выводит нас напрямую к миру Пинчона, и вот за него дважды краснознаменному барону Умберто от нас большое спасибо. а самое приятное - он не дает нам никаких рецептов и/или инструментов чтения Джойса, тем самым собственным авторитетом никак не сужая фильеру. в лучшем случае он может вполне околично описать лишь подходы к снаряду. но читать Джойса "по Эко" будет, пожалуй, невозможно - в немалой степени от того, что он лишь систематизатор, а не интерпретатор. но систематизирует он все, что касается наложения Джойсом "порядков" на мироздание, очень хорошо.
к третьей главе - о Финнеганах - вопросов больше (и к автору, и к переводчику, который иначе совершенно великолепен, но вот тут появляются какие-то мелкие глупости). хотя в целом читательское зрение его нас не связывает (но, в данном случае, и не помогает, что, видимо, по-любому было бы невозможно).
в общем, рекомендуется истинным фанатам (Джойса, не Эко)
October 13, 2024
Ο Τζόυς ήθελε ο αναγνώστης να καταλάβει αυτά που ήθελε να πει ο ίδιος, όχι να κάνει του κεφαλιού του. Δεν ήθελε να κάνει την " δική " του ανάγνωση, να φτιάξει το δικό του βιβλίο, να κάνει τέχνη. Ήθελε ο αναγνώστης να είναι άγρυπνος.
Ο Τζόυς πίστευε στον ιδανικό αναγνώστη για τα βιβλία του.
Ο Έκο ήταν ένας απ' αυτούς.
Ο Τζόυς πίστευε στον ιδανικό αναγνώστη για τα βιβλία του.
Ο Έκο ήταν ένας απ' αυτούς.
January 22, 2015
This book made me feel wicked smart. It made me realize the maximum potential of my brain. Reading it was like being in a dream and watching myself comprehend everything.
February 16, 2025
a really excellent book going into wonderful detail about the aesthetic formulation that philosophically flowed through Joyce's writing. Eco's treatment of Stephen's Aristotelian ideal of beauty as an epiphany. Good stuff. It was insanely confusing though. I am baffled (almost as much as by Joyce himself)
July 3, 2021
ზოგადად მგონია, რომ ლიტერატურა ძალიან პირადი თემაა. თითოეული მკითხველი ყველა წიგნსა და მწერალს ინდივიდუალურად აღიქვამს, თუმცა არ შეიძლება არ დავაფასოთ ისეთი ავტორის ანალიზი, როგორიც უმბერტო ეკოა, მით უფრო, როდესაც საქმე ჯეიმს ჯოისის მსგავს მწერალს ეხება.
April 28, 2020
Сложный и пронзительный анализ романов Джойса с разбором всех тонкостей и слоев. Требуется к чтению после каждого прочтения Джойса.
August 26, 2022
I only read about half the book, primarily the introduction and the chapter on 'Finnegans Wake', but what I discovered is that there is a lot of method behind Joyce’s madness, and whether Eco reads too much into Joyce's work, or not, there must be at least some truth to Eco's untangling of Joyce’s literary manoeuvres which put to rest any notion that Joyce was simply mucking around (but not necessarily that 'Wake' was a form of literary prank).
Want to read
October 15, 2020McLuhan owned a copy of this book, inscribed by the author. There are no annotations or indications that he ever read it.
March 28, 2021
This was a really interesting read, but the format for the Kindle edition was terrible.
December 10, 2012
A neat, small book comprised of two essays based on lectures, one by renowned author Umberto Eco and the other by Liberato Santoro-Brienza, both Italians.
Both essays are equally interesting and insightful, and shed unique light on Joyce's work.
Both essays are equally interesting and insightful, and shed unique light on Joyce's work.
August 18, 2011
Interesting counterpoint to popular notions of Joyce as an incoherent "stream of consciousness" writer.
February 16, 2013
great insights (although naturally somewhat outdated at times)
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews