"It's the first book which revisits Greek and Latin theories of signs from the point of view of a profound classical scholarship and a paramount knowledge of contemporary semiotics debates." —Umberto Eco
Available in English for the first time is Professor Manetti's brilliant study of the origin of semiotics and sign theory. He seeks to discover the common thread that runs through the classical world from the very beginning of human thought to the fourth century A.D. In the "classical" tradition he sees a concept of the sign which is significantly different from that currently in use.
Acknowledgments Introduction
One. Mesopotamian Divination
Two. Greek Divination
Three. Signs and Semiosic Processes in Greek Medincine
Four. Plato
Five. Language and Signs in Aristotle
Six. Theory of Language and Semiotics in the Stoic Philosophers
Seven. Inference and Language in Epicurus
Eight. Philodemus: De Signis
Nine. Latin Rhetoric
Ten. Augustine
Notes Bibliography
GIOVANNI MANETTI is a teacher and researcher in the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Bologna. CHRISTINE RICHARDSON is in the Department of Languages at the University of Bologna.
