Download or read book Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture written by Douglass Merrell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a philosophical overview of Umberto Eco's historical and cultural development as a unique, internationally recognized public intellectual who communicates his ideas to both an academic and a popular audience. It describes Eco’s intellectual development from his childhood during World War II and student involvement as a Catholic youth activist and scholar of the Middle Ages, to his early writings on the "openness" of modern works such as Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Merrell also explores Eco’s pioneering role in semiotics and his later career as a novelist.