Quotes from book
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

Name: Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
Author: Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods is a non-fiction book by Umberto Eco. Originally delivered at Harvard for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1992 and 1993, the six lectures were published in the fall of 1994.

“How should we deal with intrusions of fiction into life, now that we have seen the historical impact that this phenomenon can have? … Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.”

Umberto Eco book Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994) Chapter Six: "Fictional Protocols"

“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.”

Umberto Eco book Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994) Chapter Four: "Possible Woods"

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