Article: Brilliantly becalmed The fictive and scholarly voyages of Umberto Eco

THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE

By Umberto Eco. Translated, from the Italian, by William

Weaver. Harcourt Brace. 513 pp. $25.

THE SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT LANGUAGE

By Umberto Eco. Translated, from the Italian, by James

Fentress. Blackwell. 400 pp. $24.95.

Robert Taylor is the retired chief book critic of the

Globe.

The novels of Umberto Eco drift on a Sargasso Sea of narrative, barnacled by arcane ideas and going nowhere. But his essays about the Middle Ages or the nature and origin of language are provocative and lively. As a scholar Eco is stimulating. Did the Serpent tempt Eve by speaking French? Can a marginal nation produce a great poet? As a storyteller, ...

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