This book is a reading of the arabesque tales of Edgar Allan Poe, focusing on the main themes of love, identity, and reason as they are played out in a core set of four love stories bearing the names of beautiful undying ladies. Included are chapters on structural plot analysis, the doppelgnger motif and close readings of thematic features in the four Poe tales. The book also offers a categorization of Poe's entire fictional oeuvre using the terms arabesque and grotesque, as well as a discussion of love's psychology and tellability.

Hitherto, there has been no book that attempted to sum up the breadth of Umberto Eco’s work and it importance for the study of semiotics, communication and cognition. There have been anthologies and overviews of Eco’s work within Eco Studies; sometimes, works in semiotics have used aspects of Eco’s work. Yet, thus far, there has been no overview of the work of Eco in the breadth of semiotics. This volume is a contribution to both semiotics and Eco studies. The 40 scholars who participate in the volume come from a variety of disciplines but have all chosen to work with a favorite...