Paolo Fabbri, among the greatest interpreters of contemporary semiotics, did not like manuals, saccharine crystallizations of the dynamics and controversies of all scientific research. Less so those of his discipline, semiotics, the science of human and social signification. Rather, he worked quite a bit to promote, explain, interpret, and critique the works of many semioticians and a number of authors who in the study of signification were nevertheless interested. He has sometimes edited their writings, collecting and translating them, as well as writing introductions or afterwords with some assiduity.

Gathering these twenty-eight texts now, as is done in the present volume, an extraordinary picture emerges of the depth of Fabbri's thought, the breadth of his interests, and the rigor of his arguments, never obvious, never redundant, ready instead to reverse the course of common sense. At the same time, discussing the works of such great names as Greimas, Thom, Eco, Deleuze, Jullien, Marin, Duranti, Coquet, Prieto, Benveniste, Goodman, Lotman, Saussure, Hammad, and Zilberberg, one glimpses in transparency the structure - fragmentary but cohesive - of a true work of introduction to semiotics. A manual by other means.