Universe of the Mind A Semiotic Theory of Culture [Paperback]

Universe of the Mind
A Semiotic Theory of Culture
Yuri M. Lotman
Introduction by Umberto Eco
Translated by Ann Shukman

A major book by one of the initiators of cultural studies.

Universe of the Mind is an ambitious, complex, and wide-ranging book that semioticians, textual critics, and those interested in cultural studies will find stimulating and immensely suggestive. Journal of Communication

Soviet semiotics offers a distinctive, richly productive approach to literary and cultural studies and Universe of the Mind represents a summation of the intellectual career of the man who has done most to guarantee this. Slavic and East European Journal

Universe of the Mind addresses three main areas: meaning and text, culture, and history. The result is a full-scale attempt to demonstrate the workings of the semiotic space or intellectual world. Part One is concerned with the ways that texts generate meaning. Part Two addresses Lotmans central idea of the semiospherethe domain in which all semiotic systems can functionpresented through an analogy with the global biosphere. Part Three focuses on semiotics from the point of view of history.

A seminal text in cultural semiotics, the books ambitious scope also makes it applicable to disciplines outside semiotics. The book will be of great interest to those concerned with cultural studies, anthropology, Slavic studies, critical theory, philosophy, and historiography.

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman is the founder of the Moscow-Tartu School and the initiator of the discipline of cultural semiotics.

Introduction by Unberto Eco

Preface
Notes to Preface

Part One: The Text as a Meaning-Generating Mechanism

1. Three Functions of the Text
2. Autocommunication: I and Other as Addressees
3. Rhetoric as a Mechanism for Meaning-Generation
4. Iconic Rhetoric
5. The Text as Process of Movement: Author to Audience, Author to Text
6. The Symbol as lãF