Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T08:53:37.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Ars Oblivionalis? Forget It!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Umberto Eco
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

ONCE, AS A JOKE, some friends and I invented advertisements for university positions in nonexistent disciplines. We divided these disciplines into four departments: adynata, or impossibilia, containing sciences that were historically impossible, such as history of the wheel in the pre-Columbian empires, history of painting on Easter Island, Aztec horse racing; oxymoronica, containing sciences that were self-contradictory and analytically impossible, such as nomadic urban studies, institutions of deviance, binary logic of the included middle; byzantinica, containing sciences of utter uselessness, such as potiosection, or the art of cutting broth; and tetrapiloctomia, or the art of quartering a hair, containing sciences of excessive subtlety, such as microscopy of indiscernibles.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 103 , Issue 3 , May 1988 , pp. 254 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Agrippa, H. C. De incertitudine et vantiate scientiarum. Opera. Lyon: Beringos, 1600.Google Scholar
Delminio, Giulio Camillo. La idea del theatro. Tutte l'opere. Venezia: Giolito, 1567.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Hjelmslev, Louis. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Trans. Whitfield, Francis J. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1943.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R., and Halle, M. Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton, 1956.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers. 4 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1934–48.Google Scholar
Ramus, Petrus [Pierre de la Ramée]. Scholae in tres primas liberales artes. Frankfurt: Wechel, 1581.Google Scholar
Rosselli[us], Cosma[s]. Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae. Venezia: Paduanius, 1579.Google Scholar
Rossi, Paolo. Clavis universalis: Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. 1960. 2nd ed. Bologna: Mulino, 1983.Google Scholar
Spangerbergius, Johannes. Libellus artificiosae memoriae. Wittenberg: Seitz, 1570.Google Scholar
Tornasi, Pietro [da Ravenna]. Foenix. Venezia: de Chrois, 1491.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances. The Art of Memory. London: Routledge, 1966.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge, 1964.Google Scholar