L’attività inferenziale e le aspettative nel pensiero estetico di Umberto Eco

Abstract

Umberto Eco’s aesthetic theory shows a great continuity and coherence through decades. Both in Opera aperta (a pre-semiotic work published in 1962) and in Lector in fabula, inferential activity is at the very center of aesthetic experience and of interpretation in general. The musicological theory by Leonard B. Meyer was one of Eco’s inspiration sources; it suggested the importance of this inferential activity and of the tensions it generates in producing emotional reactions to textual stimuli. But tensions are not the only way inferential activity contribute to aesthetic experience; tendencies too have an important role in it.