Abstract
Umberto Eco’s role is explored in the development and demise of the Italian Neo-avant-garde Gruppo 63 from the perspective of the historical roots of the avant-garde and the role of education in the development of the traditional elite in relation to the expansion of education following the Enlightenment and the rise of popular culture. The avant-garde reaction to the mass media in postwar Italy is considered through its provocative focus on language. The concept of kitsch is analyzed in relation to the products of elite culture and popular novels such as The Da Vinci Code, as well as an analysis of the problem of defining the value of a popular work as entertainment or escapist literature and its role in uncritically confirming the conditions of contemporary society.
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Notes
- 1.
Eco, “The Death of the Gruppo 63,” from The Open Work, pp. 237–240.
- 2.
Eco, “The Death of the Gruppo 63,” p. 241.
- 3.
Poggioli, Renato, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 10–11.
- 4.
Poggioli, Renato, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 10.
- 5.
Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, pp. 18–19.
- 6.
Burwick, Frederick, The Damnation of Newton: Goethe’s Color Theory and Romantic Perception, (New York: Walter de Gruyter. Inc. 1986), p. 8.
- 7.
According to Robert Darnton in The Great Cat Massacre And Other Episodes From French Cultural History, (New York: Basic Books, 1984), p. 11.
- 8.
Eco, “The Structure of Bad Taste,” from The Open Work, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p. 186.
- 9.
- 10.
Eco, The Open Work, p. 183.
- 11.
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” from Art and Culture, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), p. 10.
- 12.
Eco, The Open Work, p. 189.
- 13.
Eco, The Open Work, p. 189.
- 14.
Eco, The Open Work, p. 194.
- 15.
Eco,The Open Work, p. 197.
- 16.
“Questions for Umberto Eco,” Interview by Deborah Solomon, published November 25, 2007.
- 17.
“3x12,” QI (episode transcript).
- 18.
Eco, “Postscript” to The Name of the Rose, p. 528.
- 19.
Eco, “Postscript” to The Name of the Rose, p. 528.
- 20.
Eco, “Postscript” to The Name of the Rose, pp. 528–529.
- 21.
Eco, “Postscript” to The Name of the Rose, p. 529.
- 22.
Eco, “Postscript” to The Name of the Rose, p. 529.
- 23.
Eco, “Postscript” to The Name of the Rose, p. 532.
- 24.
Eco, The Aesthetics of Chaosmos, p. 61.
- 25.
Eco, “Postscript” to The Name of the Rose, p. 522.
- 26.
Ellman, Biography of James Joyce, 1983, p. 608.
- 27.
- 28.
Jeff Israely, @Time, Milan, Sunday, June 5, 2005.
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Merrell, D. (2017). The Gruppo 63 and the Italian Neo-avant-garde. In: Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54789-3_6
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