It’s a dull world in which children don’t challenge their parents

On the Shoulders of Giants consists of 12 essays that the late Umberto Eco gave as lectures at the annual Milanesiana festival of culture between 2001 and 2015. Judging from the book, seeing him deliver them must have been like going to a concert these days by Van Morrison or Bob Dylan. Sometimes he’s on top form, all the old magic thrillingly intact; quite often he seems to be rather going through the motions. And while he can always be relied on for a generous smattering of his greatest hits — conspiracy theories, William of Ockham, the Rosicrucians, Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite — these too are performed with noticeably varying amounts of feeling and effort.

The best essay is the first, which includes a thorough history of the book’s title phrase, complete with Eco’s usual airy references to any number of obscure medieval thinkers. In 1675, Isaac Newton famously declared: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ As it transpires, though, the same idea had been expressed for centuries by (among others) Sven Aagesen, Gerard of Cambrai, Raoul de Longchamp, Gilles de Corbeil and Gerard of Auvergne. But, Eco wonders intriguingly, is it a modest remark or a boastful one? On the one hand, these people are all acknowledging their forebears’ greatness. On the other, they’re leaving us in no doubt as to who can see further now.

Nonetheless, this is really only an aside to the essay’s main concern, which is with cultural ‘parricide’: the way each generation rejects the ideas of their fathers, normally by conscripting and developing the ideas of their grandfathers. Impressively, in around 20 pages, Eco traces how this has worked from Ancient Rome to the present. Or almost to the present — because, as he notes with some sadness, the glory days of parricide appear to be over.