Serendipities

Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (originally published in English, translated by William Weaver) is a 1998 collection of essays by Umberto Eco.

Dealing with the history of linguistics and Early Modern concepts of a perfect language, the material in the book overlaps with La ricerca della lingua perfetta.

As Eco explains it in his preface, serendipity is the positive outcome of some ill-conceived idea.

[1] In chapter 1, based on a 1994 lecture held at Bologna University, Eco introduces his thesis about consequences of erroneous beliefs.

This article about a book on language, linguistics or translation is a stub.