See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/344951865

Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose as a postmodern gothic fiction

Thesis · October 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27794.07361

CITATIONS READS

0 97

1 author:

Annmary Paul
Kristu Jayanti College
2 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Semiotics and intertextuality in the novel Name of the Rose View project

Name of the Rose as Postmodern Gothic fiction View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Annmary Paul on 29 October 2020.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Umberto Eco’s first novel The Name of the Rose written in 1980 and he had assumed

a vital role in the vast majority of the scholarly, stylish, social, and political exchanges

for over 20 years. He wrote in the magazine l’Espresso and as an art critic and

semiotician. In his initial book, The Open Work and The Role of the Reader had

investigations in vagueness of abstract. Thus making the readers to be more

enthusiastic in the interpretive and inventive procedure.

His prominent books like A Theory of Semiotics in 1976 and Semiotics and the

Philosophy of Language in 1984 gave a strong base for the semiotics and thus making

him one of the establishing fathers of contemporary semiotics. He had enthusiasm for

characters like James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Thomas Aquinas and they are also

reflected in his books. The Name of the Rose is a dark homicide riddle set in a

fourteenth-century Italian Christian religious community. There is a connection

amongst novel towards his allure for mainstream culture, medieval history, and also

semiotics. The novel has something more other than these religious community

killings, as it is a fictionalized adaptation of his hypothetical work.

The novel incorporates varied interpretive references and topics regarding

postmodern age. These interpretive components inside the books refer to Eco’s

“other” collection of work, his scholarly compositions, particularly on his works

about semiotics. This novel like different books composed by him contains echoes of

thoughts discussed in Eco’s hypothetical works, similar to Brother William’s piece

and routine with regards to the procedure of “abduction” and the idea of “unlimited

semiosis,” so as to propose how the books serve to “narrativise” thoughts that as of

now exist as hypothesis.

 2

The vast majority of his books do not have parts of the real world, and he does

not view one as more imaginative than the other one. The crucial contrast lies in the

method of composing. The novel has an abundant variety of implications as it

demonstrates how any notion or circumstance is loaded with foolishness and how

logical or hypothetical works attempt to build up request, clearness, and exactness.

Semiotics made everything simple to handle, thus it broke free from

conventional limits as in to investigate both high and mainstream culture, both writing

and different discourses. It views every single social articulation as messages in a

correspondence procedure. It is considered as an arrangement of signs that one use to

depict the world and instruct it to each other. This is obvious in his papers, where he

analyzes reality as an open undertaking. It does not make a difference whether it is the

cutting edge of the 60s, fear mongering of the 70s, otherworldliness of the 80s or

morals of the 90s. Thus it empowered him to converse every last bit of it and

considering all to be highlights of a similar universe of implications and translations.

Semiotics is regular in Eco’s works yet it does not imply that they are

profoundly hypothetical. Large portions of the writings were initially distributed in

papers and week by week as a type which is among hypothetical and subjective

discourse. It is an indication of Eco’s acknowledgment that it is mandatory to utilize

one dialect for saying what you cannot state in another and this acknowledgment is

the postmodern condition.

In his article from Faith in Fakes, “Dialect, Power, Force” he manages the

postmodern awareness of living in a universe without a heart and living on the edge.

This universe is preferred comprehended by fiction than over by a hypothesis. He

abandoned the general models of correspondence to the more distinct problems with

respect to the examination of scholarly messages.

 3

In his book Kant and the Platypus, his hypothetical consideration moved from

the translation of writing towards psychological hypothesis about the assembly

between the real world and observation.

Eco’s last novel The Island of the Day Before, there is never again a centre of

the universe known to man and not yet an inside a man whether in individuality,

reason or psychology, he says that seventeenth-century individuals were “without a

soul.” He manages to talk and analogies in the novel to avoid anthropocentrism.

In postmodernism and deconstructive theory, there is an absence of

intelligibility, irrationalism, and hermetism. As per Eco, a genuine contention requires

a middle ground, a consistent position from where one can see and compose. He had

said that reason and traditional Aristotelian rationale as key to every genuine

contention. Poetry and fiction are available to these different conceivable outcomes.

In verse one does not need to seek after reason on some sort of rationale as it tries

different things with various kinds of rationale, as it has many distinctive focuses and

perspectives. This makes literature both a medium for entertainment as well as a

platform to gain new knowledge. In this way, an individual gets a different outcome

than what is not out of the ordinary. In fiction, there are limitless potential outcomes

like verse and may find that a third way also exists: tertium datur.

Theoretical Framework

The most important aspect in the postmodern period is that it dissects the written

works of the past through another viewpoint. Our human nature is curious to discover

significance in life whether it is in otherworldly or material perspectives. Writing is

not free from this inherent curiosity as it reflects real life. Critics are endeavouring to

define new theories to assist them with explaining life around them. The general
 4

public is in a phase of breaking the cliché mentality that dictates establishment and

grasp the receptiveness to things around. This new hunger for change combined with

expansive attitude brought about the reappearance of the writing of the past and also

contemporary writing. In this manner bringing about disclosure of new importance,

another point of view or different elements like woman’s rights into the content.

New Historicism and Cultural Studies

New Historicism is a basic methodology created during the 1980s crafted by Michel

Foucault and Stephen Greenblatt. It accentuates the social setting in which content is

designed as opposed to content’s formal structure. New Historicism centres on the

understanding of the significance as items implanted in a certain social milieu.

Subsequently, for better comprehension of the content, they are required to

comprehend the creator’s experience and social setting in which the work was

conveyed. A part of the striking figures of this method of analysis was Stephen

Greenblatt, Fredric Jameson, and Alan Liu.

Writing is not the declaration of solitary in one’s personality, however, in the

end, making of a specific social minute. New Historicists take a glance at the writings

with other social results of a specific period to exhibit how ideas, frames of mind, and

belief systems move over an extensive social range that is not artistic at all. New

Historicists examines the effect of setting and belief system and perceive that their

analysis encases predispositions got from their chronicled position and philosophy. It

is difficult to get away from one’s own trustworthiness, as the significance of content

is liquid, not settled. New Historicists attempt to arrange aesthetic writings both as

after effect of an authentic setting and as the way to understand society and history.
 5

New Historicism is coupled with Cultural Studies, which is a more, an

extensive development in the humanities and sociology. Social Studies underlines that

a single comprehension is socially explicit, as opposed to all-inclusive. Both New

Historicism and Cultural Studies have obliged its creation to French thinker Michel

Foucault, who contended that discourse is a result of an unbounded system of

frameworks that can be characterized by strong topics. New Historicism likewise

mirrors the heritage of Marxist analysis, since it looks to reveal the ideological

conditions that shape a given text.

Narratology is a part of structuralism, its investigation of how accounts make

meaning, and what the fundamental methods are. The basic is to all demonstrations of

narration. The ‘story’ is the real grouping of occasions that may happen whereas

‘plot’ start someplace amidst a chain of occasions and it might contain ‘flashback’ or

‘flash forward.’ It is an endeavour to ponder the idea of the ‘story’ itself, as the idea

and as a social practice.

Semiotics is the investigation of sign and image framework in a text.

Semiotics has been valuable since it gives us another method for excavation into how

dialect and significance are encoded. The connection between signifier and signified

may appear to be obvious now. However semiotic investigation regularly advanced a

wide range of readings. Dialect is not in every case pretty much “saying it as is it.” It

can enable scholars to dissect content to break down its symbolism and chains of

signifiers in a wide range of ways.

Scholars take a unique perspective about the semiotic investigation, as there

are wide choices of words for all sort of an examination inside semiotics. A few

scholars favour synchronic examination and others leaning toward a paradigmatic

methodology since this adds to the decent variety of field of study. In spite of the fact
 6

that scholars take distinctive points to a semiotic investigation, semiotics has been

valuable since it enables us to analyze the subtleties of specific writings while

searching for associations. This can mean associations inside a solitary content;

however, it is something that one can investigate on a broad dimension. That enables

us to dissect the manners by which writings stick to, and classification of related

traditions.

Gothic fiction had dependent to create fear and horror based on the things

invisible to the physical eye. The superstitious interpretations of the novels are

encouraged by generic expectation and narrative devices. These gothic fictions

play with the fine line between fictional forms and social rules. The

labyrinthine complexities in these fictions reveal the secret, creating horror

and eliminating the element of fear. Thus, in the end, the above balance is

retained without any error. There is always an uncanny and disturbing

uncertainty with a touch of ambivalence and duplicity evident in these novels.

Thus resulting in a reflexive form of the narrative anxiety.” This pervasive

cultural concern that is “things are not only not they seem: what they seem is

what they are, not a unity of word or image and thing, but words and images

without things or things themselves, effects of narrative form and nothing else.

(Mambrol)

Postmodernist writers thus take this notion of being as;

unstable, unfixed and ungrounded in any reality, truth or identity other than

those that narrative provides, there emerges a threat of sublime excess, of new

darkness of multiple and labyrinthine narratives in which human myth again

dissolves, confronted by an uncanny force beyond its control. The horror of

 7

textuality is linked to pervasive terrors of anarchic disintegration or psychotic

dissolution (Mambrol)

Literature Review

David G Baxter in his article ‘Murder and Mayhem in a Medieval Abbey: the

Philosophy of The Name of the Rose.’ talks about the way Eco uses a specific system

of the genre novel to introduce some philosophical standards of that age as well as of

modern age. The background knowledge in various philosophies especially theology

will help the readers to comprehend the novel more deeply. The article throws light

on the clash between medieval Christian theology and the philosophy of a rational

human.

Diana June Serimshaw in her article named ‘Making the Truth Laugh’ gives a

glimpse into how Umberto Eco employs the method of the learned wit to produce

works rich in satire. He utilizes different methods to construct intellectual laugh like

irony, to assault the disturbing subjects which are not simple to handle. It will

facilitate the reader to observe the mistakes in society and transform it. Some readers

often misinterpret this text as it includes many controversial topics. He uses learned

wit, parody, paradox, as well as game theory to make the text more appealing despite

as it has intricate facts.

Steven Sallis in the article named ‘Naming the Rose: Readers and Codes in

Umberto Eco’s Novel.’ dwells deep into Eco’s the theory of Signs and Roles of the

Reader. Eco describes the progression of the semiotic in the previous fifty years.

During the sixties it concentrated on the theoretical base of the signs or sign-

convention. During the seventies a transfer from signs to texts as semiotics theory

shifted from what comprises a sign to the creation of the text. The third stage does not
 8

focus on the generation of the text but their reader’s reaction. It focuses on the

significance of the reader in the textual analysis as signs, as they are structured due to

the inferential model. Thus novel The Name of the Rose, a semiotic explores the

importance of signs in literature as a whole.

Yimeng Cui in the ‘Problems of Bakhtin’s Aesthetics: The Name of the Rose

as a critical examination of the carnival.’ explains how Umberto Eco’s novel

functions as an example that emphasizes a structural contradiction in Bakhtinian

aesthetics and his concept of the carnivalesque, which places the novel and novelistic

in a reversed binary opposition. This began with Bakhtin's examinations on

Dostoevsky's polyphonic novels and pioneered terms like novel and novel. These

concepts are transverse in his cultural theory. Thus this article brings out defects of

the carnivalesque. It is considered as a reaction to Bakhtin as he disapproved his

theory and responds with sympathy.

Christoph Prang in his article ‘the Creative Power of semiotics Umberto Eco’s

The Name of the Rose.’ deals about how the novel is a perfect example for

semiomimesis. This is the creative requisition and exploitation of narratives within

semiotics theory for the making of art. Thus it gives insight into decisive semiotics

philosophy by Roger Bacon and William of Ockham, embedded in the novel. Thus

readers get a better grasp of the novel’s semiotics construction and creative process

mixed up in the artistic creation.

David H Richter in ‘Eco’s Echoes: fictional theory and detective practice in

The Name of the Rose.’ discuss how the novel endeavour to outline the stages in

between Alain de Lille, 12thcentury anti-scholastic and modern structuralists like

Umberto Eco. The novel is treated as extraordinarily clever past of the Sherlock

Holmes novels like Baskerville and Adso who finds reflection in Sherlock Holmes
 9

series. The novel owes less to Doyle than to Dorothy Sayers, Ellery Queen, and John

Dickson Carr. The novel is a mystery to end all obscurity. This novel is a classical

detective story and postmodern fiction as it is also a critique and creates irony. The

Meta narratives style constructs make the readers get consciously lost in this historical

novel. In this way, the novel is open as well as close-ended novel.

Rocco Capozzi’s article titled ‘Eco’s The Name of the Rose Bricolage and

Montage of the cultural history.’ traces how Umberto Eco was influenced by James

Joyce and his most preferred movie Casablanca. The persuasion can be seen in the

careful analysis of the puns riddles, metonymy, and interactive metaphors used in the

novel. Most of his novels are vibrant epistemological metaphors. The novel itself is

titled with skilled use of parodies, irony, puny metaphors erudition semiosis, details,

and comic relief as it gives an overview of his narratives strategies. The novel also

discovers clichés, archetypes, that added to making of his first hybrid cognition

narratives an excellent example of docere et delectare.

Donald Richards in his article ‘Evidence of Holmes in Umberto Eco’s The

Name of the Rose’ tells about how this novel is a book about books. As the plot

revolves in the three levels, the focus on a medieval library that contains Aristotle's

second volume of the poetics and the intertextual mentioning to other works by

Voltaire, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jorge Luis Borges. This is the postmodern

outcome and the novel is an ‘open work’ a notion he made where the reader is left to

turn up more than one interpretations. The golden age detective novel which Symons

devotes the second chapter to his book, says that it a game played between the writer

and the reader. Eco and Doyle often defy these rules and there are many resemblances

between William and Sherlock as well as between Adso and Watson. The novel has
 10

many historical and intertextual references that give a strong foundation for his

previous theories.

Chapter Overview

Chapter I explore the various literary theories and methodologies used to dwell deep

into the abyss within The Name of the Rose. Thus trying to prove that the novel can

be considered as a postmodern gothic fiction. It also gives questions which are to be

answered by the end of this analysis.

Chapter II try to discuss the historical context in which the novel is written.

Fourteenth-century Italy was the base for the narration of the storyline. The novel

traces many similarities to the real historical events, figures, and ideologies that was

prevalent in that age. It is aspect defining the novel as a postmodern fiction.

Chapter III reflects on the various intertextual elements in the novel that make

it both complex and intriguing to the readers. The characters, frame story, and

narrative style add to this aspect. Thus both chapter I and II define two different

aspects that categorise this novel as a postmodern fiction.

Chapter IV comprises the gothic elements evident in the novel which makes it

a postmodern gothic fiction. The mysterious murders in the abbey, supernatural

activities, and testimonies, a library like a complex maze etc evoke fear and horror in

the readers like that of a gothic novel.

Chapter V summarise the above chapters and come to a conclusion about

various arguments raised in the chapters. This helps one to formulate a critique on the

above points evident in these chapters.

 11

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 What is the importance of history and historical events in the making of this

novel?

 How does the character of William of Baskerville as a monk different from

other monks in that era?

 What are the intertextual references in the novel that contributed to increase

the effectiveness of the text?

 How does the narrative pattern of the story contribute to its effectiveness

among the readers?

 What are the different philosophical statements evident in the text that are

relevant in this modern era?

 What are the hidden gothic elements in the text introduced by the writer to

enhance the meaning of the text?

This is an attempt to reveal the intertextual elements, trying to find various

factors that set the foundation for the novel like the importance of history in the novel

and its relevance, forms of narration structure, gothic elements in the novel The Name

of the Rose.
 12

CHAPTER II

THE REPRESENTED PAST IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE

Umberto Eco’s debut novel The Name of the Rose is a splendid novel with the

convergence of various critical theories in literature. Most of the books do not come

furnished with a user guide for the reader to get their full understanding. They do have

a specific position toward writing and toward the world, some more clear than others

do. The Name of the Rose displays such a space for complexity by epitomizing images

and ideas that are related to established theories in the plot, the architecture, the

characters’ dialogue, and the overall texture of the work. The scholarly hypothesis

showing up all through the novel The Name of the Rose can be utilized to comprehend

the novel itself. Thus it sets an interpretive point of reference for moving toward

different works.

The essential ability of an abstract hypothesis is to approach the content of the

text with many assumptions about the world and about its composition. These

assumptions bring up explicit issues that empower the reader to get to what that

hypothesis assumes the content of the text. Most works, in general, accept a specific

hypothetical system as its base. Through the plot, style, dialogue, and other

components, they infer something about writing and about the outer world and thus

the work is connected to different works.

It is observed that artistic creations like painting, literature and other fine arts

make an individual to imagine an alternate arrangement of presumptions, which can

shape the manner in which they perceive their general surroundings and deciphers

different artworks. It can be assessed by a third standard of the viewer’s own

presumptions about what is significant on the planet and in workmanship. This is

 13

directly or indirectly dependent on his or her social, religious, and imaginative

convictions and encounters.

The Name of the Rose is a historical novel set during 1327 with historical

figures, and carefully researched medieval elements. The novel tends to portray

accurately the Christian theology, the culture, and mode of thinking of the people who

lived at that time. The key characters and events in the text are fictional however; it

blurs the line between reality and fiction as seen in many historical fictions. The Name

of the Rose poses questions on the historical narrative and highlights the subjective

element of historical analysis, as it does not support the Christian view of history.

The novel The Name of the Rose has a medieval setting that Eco, a medievalist

summons onto the page. Here each element of the religious community or ascetic life

is depicted with accuracy. The readers get an insightful picture on the abbey’s design

in Gothic engineering, timetabled prayers, herbalism, cellaring and wine, live-stock,

smithery, sacrament, settlement, nourishment, work done in the abbey, institutional

hierarchy, devotional chants, Latin and vulgar dialects, technology, politics, and the

scholarly atmosphere.

The Historical Background

However, in the Fourteenth Century, there is a split between rationalism and religious

orthodoxy. It was on the precarious edge of self-thrashing, Renaissance, as well as

break from the Orthodox perspective. As James Hitchcock in his article War of Roses:

The historical context of “The Name of the Rose”says that,

The immediate context is a particularly fierce episode in the perennial

medieval conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1314 a

disputed imperial election produced two claimants to the throne, one of whom,
 14

Louis of Bavaria (Louis IV), triumphed over his rival within a few years. In

1305 the papacy had moved to Avignon. However, the first electoral

consistory following that move, also in 1314, dragged on over two years,

amidst a great deal of intrigue and even threats of violence against the

Cardinals, until in 1316 it elected a Frenchman who chose the name, John

XXII. John's intention was to restore papal authority in Italy, and to that end,

he sided with Louis IV’s rival and ultimately declared Louis himself

excommunicated. Louis responded by invading Italy, “deposing” the pope and

setting up his own anti-pope. It is this war, with Louis’s armies advancing

towards Rome, which is the immediate setting for the novel, the narrator

Adso’s own father being among the imperial supporters. Louis in fact entered

Rome in 1328, a year after the events in the novel. His quarrel with the papacy

outlasted John XXII, who died in 1334, and was compromised during two

subsequent papacies. Louis died in 1347.

In his war against the pope the Emperor found unlikely allies in the so-called

Spiritual Franciscans, or Fraticelli (“little brothers”), a group within the

Franciscan order calling for a return to the radical character of St. Francis’s

original ideal of poverty, which forbade not only individual friars but also the

community as a whole to own anything. John XXII at one point returned this

property to the order, a gesture which might ordinarily be thought of as one of

great friendliness, but was in fact intended to bring rebellious Franciscans to

heel by forcing them to repudiate what the pope regarded as an extreme

doctrine.
 15

Umberto Eco has taken some artistic freedom on some of the historical facts to suit

the plot line of the novel. The conflict between Franciscan order and Benedictine

presented in the novel was based on their ideological difference. As James Hitchcock

in his article War of Roses: The historical context of “The Name of the Rose” points

out,

Some of the Fraticelli had come to teach that radical poverty was the essence

of the Christian life and that the only true Christians were those who practiced

it. This was highly reminiscent of the Waldensian heresy of the late twelfth

century and logically carried with it a sweeping condemnation of pope and

bishops, none of whom pretended to practice radical poverty. There were

degrees within the Spiritualist movement, but the extreme wing seemed

prepared to repudiate all ecclesiastical hierarchy as a perversion of the Gospel.

Louis IV, it may be assumed, had no personal attachment to the practice of

poverty. However, by espousing the Fraticelli’s because he armed himself

with a useful weapon against the papacy since he could then argue that John

XXII had forfeited the title Vicar of Christ because of his own manner of

living and his condemnation of the radical Franciscans. The central point of

theological dispute became whether Jesus and the Apostles had owned

anything, either individually or in common. The most radical wing of the

Fraticelli shaded off into the bewildering underworld of late medieval heresies,

which were especially strong in Italy.

There are abundant references in the novel to individuals or movements

combined in varying proportions, like the idea of essential poverty, an array of

mysticism, dismissal of the church authority, and aggression against the existing

social structure. The people in power often suppressed these movements with much
 16

brutality. Here Eco presents the reader with, what the reader must note for large part

of the novel's unpredictability to be completely intelligible. This is not the

essentialized or satirized medieval structure of the human society in a creative light,

but it has laid the seeds of modernity as well.

Eco is very descriptive about the abbey and he does not think about himself

over his source material or his setting. Thus the novel is basic in nature and shows

neither disdain nor loftiness for the portrayal of the pre-moderns. In fact, despite what

might be expected, Eco presents the middle Ages as a locus classicus for humanism.

The incomparable Renaissance humanists had looked up to the Ancients and the

present humanists look up to the Renaissance humanists themselves like Montaigne,

Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Erasmus, and Petrarch. His portrayal is not simply

academic, the reader is given an extremely uncommon understanding into a

particularly medieval stunner and Catholic enthusiasm in both it’s sentimental and

abnormal signs.

Eco was influenced by the radical theory in literature. James Hitchcock in his article

War of Roses: The historical context of “The Name of the Rose” says,

...from the writings of the late twelfth-century Italian Cistercian abbot Joachim

of Flora, by far the most influential late-medieval apocalypticist. According to

Joachim, there will be three ages of history, corresponding to the persons of

the Trinity. The age of the Son, which he thought was about to end, was

essentially the age of the Incarnation, with its corollary of a visible and

hierarchical Church. In the dawning age of the Holy Spirit, however, all things

material and structural would pass away, and Christians would be guided by

direct interior illumination. At Avignon, Michael of Cesena joined the most

influential philosopher of the day. His fellow Franciscan William of Occam,

 17

also a supporter of the Spiritualists. Occam fled the papal city with Michael

and accompanied him to Louis’ court, where he too spent most of the rest of

his life. Baskerville in one place refers to Occam as his friend.

Cesena and Occam formed a triumvirate with Marsilius of Padua, for a

time Louis’s vicar in Italy. Marsilius’s book The Defender of Peace was

perhaps the single most radical medieval attack on the papacy in particular and

the temporal power of the Church in general. Written as part of Louis’s war

against John XXII, the book also stands on its own as an exercise in

undermining both the spiritual and temporal claims of the papacy, .which is

said to be a purely man-made institution, and in proposing that the Church be

firmly subordinated to the state in all its activities.

Occam was the chief representative of the philosophical school that came

to be called Nominalism, which contended that the mind cannot know the real

essence of things but only their appearances. Thus, when we name something,

we do not really state what it is but merely give it a convenient designation.

Occam’s position marked a significant departure from the Thomistic belief in

the mind’s wide-ranging powers, in the openness of reality to metaphysical

understanding.

The title of the text The Name of the Rose finds its root from this philosophical stand.

The last line is a Latin quote “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda

tenemus” (502) which tend to mean, “The rose stands by its original name; we

hold (understand) the bare names.” In other words, names and appearances are

all we really have, and they must be enough.

 18

Historical Perspective in the Frame Story

The Name of the Rose enquires about the accuracy of historical discourse in three

different parameters like complex frame story, position in historical fiction genre, and

dialogue of the characters. As we dwell deep into its frame story with lost and

rediscovered manuscripts and multiple translations of the core text over the years in a

question the authenticity of accepted historical documents. The narrator of the frame

story is unnamed in the novel. The main character Adso’s point of view is used in the

frame story while he is not the narrator of the novel and the sudden discovery of the

text makes the historical facts in the novel less credible to the reader. The reader is

kept blind regarding the text's unknown translators and their higher motives like

deliberate forgery, uncertainty, and unfaithful subjective translation.

But we see now through a glass darkly, and the truth, before it is revealed to

all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the

world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even they seem obscure to us

and if amalgamated with a will wholly bent on evil. (11)

These lines indirectly point to that this novel has an unreliable narrator like The Turn

of the Screw by Henry James. The narrator believes that his understanding of the

medieval world and its writing, that Abbe Vallet of Paris, took some liberties, not

only stylistics liberties.” Some characters “speak sometimes of the properties of herbs,

clearly referring to the book of secrets attributed to Albertus Magnus... echo too

literally both formulas of Paracelsus ... edition of Albertus unquestionably dating from

the Tudor period (4)

As the manuscript comes to the Italian narrator, he says that he can “find few

reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of

a seventeenth-century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German monk

 19

toward the end of the fourteenth century” (4), but eventually decides to share it due to

“sheer narrative pleasure...alien to our hops and our certainties” (5).

The authors’ real intention behind writing this novel is about whether to argue

a point, to entertain, and to record history are vital to value their work. Thus the

stylistic liberties taken by Abbé Vallet, the uncertain intentions of both the narrator

and Adso and the complications of multiple translations over many years make it

impractical to accept this particular story as a reliable one. Thus the reader examines

the novel based on the possible range of polemic, entertainment, or another purpose of

non-fictional, acknowledged historical documents.

Historical Perspective on the Novel’s Genre

The historical fiction is a type of literature which presents facts and also raises

questions about historical certainty. The unseen stroke in this detective novel between

what is history and what is fiction is almost transparent. It presents a postmodern

fragmentation of the idea of history by concentrating the indistinct line between

reality and construct that appears in these books is much more disguised than it

seems. The genre of historical fiction is itself a controversial subject filled with

suppositions and theoretical tensions. These tensions presented in the novel which

does not fail to explore.

Linda Hutcheon proposes that The Name of the Rose falls into a category of

“Postmodern historiographic metafiction” rather than the less theoretically loaded

“historical fiction” because of its intertextual relationship with anachronistically

modern texts like Sherlock Holmes and works of Borges (99). Ruth Glynn further

argues that classic historical fiction is compromised by the appearance not just of

modern characters, but also of modern ideas in the medieval setting and in the mouths
 20

of historical characters. She quotes Brian McHale, who argues that “the author’s

anticipation of modern thought in his fictional medieval world produces in the reader

a type of disorientation or ‘ontological queasiness’ which is symptomatic of an

inability to discern the precise boundaries between historical fact and fiction” (Glynn,

100). Even though Glynn furthers Hutcheon’s argument about the postmodern

anachronism, she still argues that the thoroughness and believability of the medieval

world are enough to categorize the novel as historical fiction despite the frequent

intrusions of the modern world (100). The novel draws attention to the dilemma

whether it is possible for an author to write his story totally estranged from the bias of

his period.

The genre of historical fiction often uses a historical setting to explore issues

of contemporary relevance. John Burke, in “The Romantic Window and the

Postmodern Mirror,” compares the medieval world that Eco creates with that of Sir

Walter Scott, concluding that Scott glorifies the present by its comparison to the dark

and divisive past (560), whereas Eco uses the past setting as a way of revealing

similar instability and uncertainty of the present (565). The comparison between

Eco’s use of the medieval setting and Scott’s earlier use of a very similar period

confirms the implication of Glynn and Carr, that any recounting of the past will be

heavily influenced by the circumstances of the present and the author’s own bias

about the meaning of both.

The author’s temporal bias is not only unique to the writing of historical

fiction. The historian Edward Carr in his book, What is History? argues that the

author of history always sheds light on his own time in the way he interprets the past.

Carr uses the example of Theodor Mommsen’s History of Rome, which although it is

a great history, according to Carr is just as much about the ideas and struggles of 1848
 21

when it was written as it is about Rome (44). Similarly, The Name of the Rose is

historical in the way that it presents and clarifies ideas and conflicts of the past but is

also very much tied to the issues that Eco's contemporary culture is concerned with.

The fictional element of the story is not the only part that encourages the

encroachment of the present in the past. The historical nature of the novel questions

whether books written primarily for historical reasons without the added element of

fiction are actually significantly more reliable in some spheres of literature. The

protagonist William of Baskerville finds its inception from the novel Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Most of the characters in the novel tend to propose modern ideas and tropes

rather than medieval ideologies. This in a way compromises the time period of the

novel, but in another sense raises the question of whether history is progressive as

many consider it to be, both in terms of culture and of thought. In other words, it is

not clear what elements of the novel are modern philosophical questions projected

backward into the fiction, and what elements are accurate representations of questions

that the modern world has inherited. Glynn says that this confusion questions, “the

traditional perspective of history as a progressive shaping force” (101).

Eco depicts medieval characters with the perspective of a modern or

postmodern man. This breaks the common thinking that history has a progressive

chart. However, we really come to know that the cognitive abilities of man had little

change over the past few centuries and some questions on morality and values remain

almost undisturbed. Eco has also tried to bring in different heretics uprising among

the Christian communities in the fictional world depicted in the novel reflect the

various social religious uprising in our society. The fascination of the monks in the

abbey for preserving books and collecting books from a different part of the world,
 22

point out to the obsession of postmodern culture with textuality. William is

considered as a representation of the modern man and his ideologies in a time where

religious orthodoxy reined society. Thus perhaps the medieval man in the medieval

world was essentially the same man as the one considered modern.

The Historical Novel is not the only category that The Name of the Rose seems

to fit in but also as a detective story. It relies throughout the plot on consistent

discovery and knowledge of past events and raises query of historical epistemology.

The detective and the historian in a way perform the same function that is seeking to

create an accurate and unified story from the available scattered facts.

The detective fiction substantiates the historian’s process by presenting the

detective as fully capable of using his sharp mind as well as keen observation skills to

discover all the facts and organize them in a sequence to solve the mystery. However,

the plot line of The Name of the Rose structurally follows the typical episodes of

finding clues and solving them like the young detective Nancy Drew. However,

William and Adso do not solve the crime in the sense that the genre would predict.

Perhaps the unreliability of Adso’s narrative structure is Adso himself as his

understanding and recollection of events are vague and incomplete. There can also be

a possibility of his memories related to past events are inside a prison of time, doubt

and guilt. Every fact in the novel first goes through Adso’s consciousness, a filter he

himself admits is inadequate, and the reader can see more fissures in the storyline that

perhaps Adso himself is aware of. He was a novice thus will only have a limited

perspective as a stranger to the unnamed Abbey, as could not be fully informed about

the context of the murders happening in the Abbey, the covert and overt interpersonal

relationships, and the theological and political background.

 23

This detective fiction genre of the book questions a world that can be

understood according to the framework which primarily sees the world and human

interaction in terms of problem and solution. The authorial statement of the aged

Adso, which clearly indicates a decline in clear memory, and also the dialogue

between William and the other characters in the main plot also highlight the

constructed nature of all historical narratives.

...perhaps, to make more comprehensible the events in which I found myself

involved, I should recall what was happening in those last years of the century,

as I understood it then, living through it, and as I remember it now,

complemented by other stories I heard afterward-if my memory still proves

capable of connecting the threads of happenings so many and confused. (12)

Adso repeatedly admits frequently his own ignorance throughout the novel. At

the end of the story, long after the library burns, Adso attempts to make some sense of

what had happened, “the more I repeat to myself the story that has emerged from [the

fragments], the less I manage to understand whether in it there is a design that goes

beyond the natural sequence of the events and the times that connect them” (501).

Based on the above statement, and a few remarks that Adso makes, Thomas Catania

argues that an honest reading of the novel is obligated to be sceptical of him because

he completely undermines his own authority (158). The truth is that either Adso is too

confused to tell a logical story, or the story is so perplexing in itself that it confuses

his brain. Catania goes on to explain the important difference between factuality and a

true story, saying that a story can be true without being factual in the sense that

Shakespeare’s Richard III tells the truth about the meaning and character of a person

even though many of the facts are wrong (158).

 24

Catania recognizes that Adso does not at all appear to be deliberately falsifying

the facts, but that his lack of understanding renders him just as incapable of telling a

true story as if he were deliberately lying (159). The truth is that an ignorant narrator

is far worse than a deceitful one because the reader cannot get interpretive bias. Adso

can be considered, as an unreliable historian because he confesses the reader. Eco

draws his attention to Adso’s limitations, as it is very similar to the limitations of non-

fictional historians.

Additionally, he does not pin down his experiences in the Abbey on that same

day but tries to recall the whole events when he is nearing his death. We know that the

memory of events and conversations related to the event are shaped by subsequent

knowledge. At the time of the writing of the frame story, Adso is old and weary: “it is

a hard thing for this old monk, on the threshold of death, not to know whether the

letter he has written contains some hidden meaning, or more than one, or many, or

none at all” (501). The first person narrative draws attention to the necessarily limited

perspective of any historical account. All historical interpretation given historians

involves some level of creativity and authorial bias as it based on past that one is not

aware of.

Jonathan Key points out that the map of the library given in text that drawn by

William and Adso communicates how medieval people always drew maps. Key uses

this apparent detail to show that the present historical frame through which they are

understood, conditions even facts that seem stable, like the physical geography of the

world. Adso retelling his story that was a part of the medieval world that drew maps

in a certain way would see the events of his narrative in a certain way. This maybe

can be different from the perspective of a twentieth-century reader. Thus historian can

be compared to the destroyed library of the Abbey, “I had before me a lesser library, a
 25

symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations,

unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books” (500). The most qualified historian

in modern time with all technology can be still limited by the perspective of his or her

own time, convictions, and angle of vision. The notion that history can be a moral and

spiritual guide, that history shapes culture, or in any way values history as a discipline

is challenged in this novel.

 26

CHAPTER III

CONVERGENCE OF PAST IN THE PRESENT

Intertextuality is a post-structuralist notion and a tool of interpretation of the texts. It

can be divided into three, firstly it is the relationship of the core text with other texts,

secondly the references to texts in the present context, and thirdly borrowing and

imitating from the previous books. Thus in a way reading becomes a method of

moving between texts. Therefore, the meaning that we extort from the text becomes

something that is present between text and all the other texts/textual matters to which

it refers and relates. Therefore, the text becomes inter-text.

Eco and Postmodern Theory

The Name of the Rose is based on postmodern theory. Eco’s cultural context and the

themes and images, and the wide array of voices that appear in The Name of the Rose

have an ambivalence on the interpretive possibilities. The readers have an affinity

towards the interpretation of this novel along the lines of post-structuralist theories

formulated by Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. Before Eco wrote The Name of the

Rose he was a part of the magazine Il Verri, and his writings were also published in

the journal Tel Quel, a journal that Kristeva was part of. Eco’s own piece The Open

Work highlights the ambiguity of interpretation in a work of art, arguing for “open”

literature where multiple interpretations from different perspectives are considered

with equal importance (15). Given his involvement with the avant-garde literary scene

and his extensive work in semiotics, he was certainly well acquainted with the

influential theorists in this group, and the themes and images that appear to reflect

their theories cannot be simply coincidental.

 27

Greek Philosophy and the Concept of Intertextuality

Despite the fact that it is a postmodern term it indicates back to a vestige. The word

intertextuality itself got from Latin Intertexto intends to blend while weaving. The

verifiably the idea of intertextuality is worried about postmodernism that is not new.

The theory of intertextuality gives a record of the speculations of Greek philosophers

Plato and Aristotle. It alludes to the theory of imitation and theory of ideas. The

Theory of Imitation displays that everything in nature is impersonation, it is not just

an impersonation of nature, yet it is an indivisible piece of the universe.

The child adapts every one of his exercises by impersonation. Therefore,

Plato's supposition was that every one of the items in nature is a duplicate of the now

existed structure. The idea goes before the item implies the idea exists before the item.

In this manner, Plato asserted that the idea is a definitive reality and items are simply

a duplicate version of it. In such a way, the artist takes after effectively composed

structures and makes new structures out of them. It implies that the artist mimic

previously existed structures.

Julia Kristeva and her Concepts in Intertextuality

The creator of the term intertextuality, Kristeva was persuaded by both Saussure’s and

Bakhtin’s models such as ‘theory of the sign’ and of ‘dialogism’. Kristeva highlights

that writings are constantly in the period of creation instead of being items to be

expended. She expresses that thoughts are not exhibited as completed, consumable

items, however, are conveyed to elevate readers to formulate their own understanding

and implications. Kristeva is impacted by Saussure’s thoughts as well as by Bakhtin’s.

Hence, her thought of intertextuality rises out of the mix of the Saussurean and

Bakhtinian speculations.
 28

Kristeva in her book A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art wrote in 1980

re-examines Bakhtin’s work. The Bounded Text and in Word, Dialog, and Novel both

written in 1980, show her poststructuralist vision. In these works, she set up the mode

in which the content is built of effectively existent talks. She argues that creators do

not produce their writings from their thoughts but instead from knowledge based on

previous writings.

Thus, she defines text in the book Bounded Text: “A permutation of texts,

intertextuality in the space of a given text,’ in which ‘several utterances, taken from

other texts, intersect and neutralize one another.” (36) Kristeva investigates the idea of

the content is that it is anything but a solitary action in its totality. This content is the

blend of social textuality. She shapes a thought that readers make singular content and

the social content from the equivalent literary material that the reader cannot

recognize from one another. It is a re-wording of Bakhtin’s idea of ‘dialogue,’ which

built a connection between writers, work, readers, society, and history. The discrete

idea of Kristeva’s theory gives close consideration to the textuality. However,

Bakhtin's work was focused on the human subject where language is its social

perspective. Thus all writings are bound to contain ideological structures that

communicated through discourses.

According to Kristeva, texts do not exhibit clear and stable meanings; they

embody society’s conflict over the meanings of the language. Thus,

intertextuality deals with the text’s existence within society and history. Texts

have no unity or unified meaning of their own; they are connected to ongoing

cultural and social processes. In Kristeva’s views, the text’s meaning is seen as

a temporary rearrangement of elements with socially pre-existent meanings.

Therefore, the meaning is may be either inside or outside the text. Here
 29

‘inside’ is (reader’s view) and ‘outside’ is (society’s influence) of the text. (a

theoretical perspective 24- 25)

In the book Intertextuality, George Allen says that “for Kristeva, … the intertextual

dimensions of a text cannot be studied as mere ‘sources’ or ‘influences’ stemming

from what traditionally has been styled ‘background’ or ‘context’” (35). Thus, all

texts are “intertextual,” at least to some level and some like The Name of the Rose to a

greater level. Even an original and non-allusive work can also represent the

intertextual tensions that Kristeva tries to explain; thus the dialogic situation is made

much clearer when a particular text draw from other outside sources.

Capozzi, in ‘Libraries, encyclopedias, and rhizomes: Popularizing culture in

Eco's superfiction' says that The Name of the Rose is a perfect example of

intertextuality within a novel; a concept that the main characters of William and Adso

were discussing themselves in the above quote. Within the pages of this book,

intertextual allusions abound. These include a forbidden manuscript, references to

authors of the middle Ages both real and imaginary, having Abelard, Bacon, Occam,

and Dante among the ranks of those mentioned. It also links to references in the

linguistic, philosophical, and historical issues that were being discussed by the

medievalist scholars around the time that Eco was writing and publishing this first

novel. (135) This communication with another text is an integral part of both the

structuralist and poststructuralist theory. Here one considers language as a complete

system. It has no real connections to the real structures in reality.

 30

The systems of language are not grounded in reality and cultures around the

world use them as an artificial means for structuring and understanding their

experiences. The system of texts and philosophical discourses is constant, but not true

in the ultimate sense. As a result, nothing new is formed from the objective analysis

of the world around us. Roland Barthes explains this process:

The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of

culture… the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never

original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others,

in such a way as never to rest on any one of them. Did he wish to express

himself, he ought at least to know that the inner ‘thing’ he thinks to ‘translate’ is

only a ready-formed dictionary, its word only explainable through other words,

and so on indefinitely. (qtd. in Allen 13)

Eco and his Theories in Intertextuality

Eco in his book The Open Work argues that all communication, especially the

contemporary literature, is open to multiple interpretations because of the background

knowledge and experiences vary from one reader to another. In the article “Prelude to a

Palimpsest” he wrote,

I believe that a text – as an object (a textual linear manifestation), insofar as it is

referred to in an encyclopedic background, comprehending in some way both the

encyclopedia of the time in which it was written and the encyclopedias of its

readers – can work as the public parameter of its interpretations (xi).

 31

Rather he distinguishes various parameters for interpretation that he may share in, but

does not have total control over the writing of the novel:

[T]he author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee a work to be

completed. He does not know the exact fashion in which his work will be

concluded, but he is aware that once completed the work in question will still be his

own. It will not be a different work, and, at the end of the interpretative dialogue, a

form which is his form will have been organized, even though it may have been

assembled by an outside party in a particular way that he could not have foreseen.

The author is the one who proposed a number of possibilities which had already

been rationally organized, oriented, and endowed with specifications for proper

development. (19)

Some of the prominent features that are very much evident in the writings of Eco are

about Renaissance and Baroque periods, problems from history mostly intellectual,

the archaeology of knowledge related to ancient missions for power and glory, such as

for the Holy Grail, Kabbalah, secret societies, and the secrets that they supposedly

keep. The main concern is that whether it had happened by coincidence, or are they a

part of Eco’s intentional allusions to other authors and their works which, in turn,

would serve to make the statement that Eco makes via William of Baskerville self-

fulfilling.

Characters Presenting Intertextuality

Adso says that “Why? To know what one book says you must read others?” then

William replies,

At times this can be so. Often books speak of other books. Often a harmless

book is like a seed that will blossom into a dangerous book, or it is the other

way around: it is the sweet fruit of a bitter stem. In reading Albert, couldn’t I
 32

learn what Thomas might have said? Or in reading Thomas, know what

Averroes said? (286)

Then Adso expresses the query that plagues common man as he says that

“True”...Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that

lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if

they spoke among themselves (289).

The intertextuality within The Name of the Rose is the name of the main

character himself, William of Baskerville as well as Adso of the Melk. This is a

combination of both a character-type and novel that Eco himself has a great fondness

for, Sherlock Holmes and Watson in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles by

Arthur Conan Doyle. (Farronaro 76) Charles Sanders Peirce proposed the Theory of

Abduction in his work on the logic of science;

Abduction is one of the three forms of logical argument. The other two are

deduction and induction. The deduction is the familiar form of syllogistic

reasoning in which from true premises one can derive necessarily true

conclusions by following the rules of deductive logic. If all M is P, and S is M,

then S is P. Induction draws conclusions which are not certain from multiple

examples. For example, if all observed swans are white, an inductive conclusion

is “all swans are white.” Or if two-thirds of observed cows are brown, the

probability of another cow being brown is assumed to be two-thirds. This is the

frequentist definition of probability.

Then Peirce gives an example of how this abduction works in simpler terms to the

readers. He explain in form of probability and chance used in everyday life. Then he

further explains about the concept of abduction,

 33

This is probability related to enumerative or exhaustive induction. If you know

all the instances of swans in the pond are white, the conclusion “all swans in

this pond are white” is true.

Abduction as a form of reasoning is relatively new. Charles Sanders Peirce

called it abduction to infer a premise from a conclusion. For example, since if it

rains, the grass gets wet, one can abduce (hypothesize) that it probably rained.

Strictly speaking, abductive reasoning is fallacious, a logical error. But Peirce

argued that this kind of reasoning has evolved in humans, who have become

adept at selecting the best hypothesis to explain the condition. Peirce identified

his abduction with the scientific method of hypothesis-deduction-observation-

experiment. In this case, the scientist makes various guesses (hypotheses) to

explain some observations. Once the hypothesis is formed, a deduction is used

to predict other logical consequences. Experiments then establish the truth or

falsity of these consequences. Notice that if the deductions predict phenomena

not previously known, the confirmed consequences are not a part of the original

phenomena that led to the hypothesis (usually inductively). Newly predicted

(discovered) phenomena carry more weight than those originally known. Peirce

knew that hypotheses need not be arrived at by induction. They could be just

intuitions or lucky guesses or, as Einstein later called them, “free creations of

the human mind.” Their origin does not matter (genetic fallacy). The “truth” of

a hypothesis lies in its experimental verification and explanatory power.

(Abduction Retrieved March 1, 2019, from Information Philosopher)

Eco’s use of Doyle’s characters does not stop with the just a name, Interactions

between the two Adso and William has more intertextuality. Adso is often referred

by William as “my dear Adso” throughout the novel. A reading of The Hound of the
 34

Baskervilles which has similar investigative style and inferential structure that is also

seen in The Name of the Rose as well. This extends to the dry humour, ambiguous

relationship between Sherlock (William) and Watson (Adso), and even the physical

locations, such as the castle and Baskerville Hall, which are reproduced in almost

complete exactness by Eco. (De Lauretis, 17)

Eco has a talent for producing a fantastical yet realistic setting in his fictional

writings where there can be characters, elements, and events from Dante to Disney,

Galileo to Jules Verne, Sherlock Holmes to Peirce, the legends of Templar and

Indiana Jones are present in his long list. There comes also a series of déjà vu and

déjà entendu from reading all of the quotations and the many collage pieces.

(Capozzi, ‘Libraries, encyclopedias and rhizomes: Popularizing culture in Eco's

superfiction’136)

Thus the readers are able to experience a magical sensation and pleasure as

they have a deeper understanding of what the writer is trying to convey through the

meanings and images conjured from the history and popular culture that is inherently

connected to the basic characters, places, and images. There is more intertextuality in

The Name of the Rose than just Doyle, as was just mentioned. In fact, according to

Eco himself, Adso, who also narrates the book, was based on the character Zeitblom

from Mann's novel, Doctor Faustus. (Cobley, 341) Zeitblom, as it turns out, is also

the narrator for Doctor Faustus and the readers get a glimpse of the deeper meaning

and symbology in the character. This brings into the statement made by Hutcheon

that "for the mystic adept, every word becomes a sign of something else, the truth of

what is not said. Therefore, one must learn to read with suspicion, lest something is

missed.”(Hutcheon, 3)
 35

The Name of the Rose has references to many different subjects and previous

works of other artists and authors. A novel is made up of other texts and tales that

have previously been told, both real and imaginary, but all sounding as though they

should be recognisable from some history; famous passages, quotations, special

lexicons, codes, and characters all utilised in the book and laid out as though they had

just been taken from a generic reference book. (De Lauretis, 16-17)

An examination of this shows that in the early Seventies, Eco started leaving

his theories and curiosity with structuralist codes, dictionaries, and Chomsky's models

of syntagmatic chains behind and began focusing more on Porphyrian trees,

encyclopedias, paradigmatic structures, and intertextuality. (Capozzi, ‘Libraries,

encyclopedias and rhizomes: Popularizing culture in Eco’s superfiction’, p. 133)

Eco’s own theorising and manifestation of his idea of the encyclopaedia and

how meaning is generated by bonding through differing and intricate ways. This

further hint at Eco’s “description of the Deluzian rhizome: ‘Every path can be

connected to every other one. It has no center, no periphery, no exit, because it is

potentially infinite’ for it is ‘the space of conjecture.’”(Hutcheon, p. 9)

There is evidence that Eco had written a hybrid novel as it contains usage of

collages made from quotations, an intricate pastiche of the historical, philosophical,

and pop culture influences that shared the same perspective on culture that Eco did.

This conveyance of ideas is successful only upon as far as the reader’s encyclopaedic

knowledge of these references and their ability to link them together as well as back

to what they reference. (Capozzi, ‘Libraries, encyclopedias and rhizomes:

Popularizing culture in Eco's superfiction’, p. 134) Eco uses intertextual references to

suggest deeper meanings through association that gave rise to a new type of novel as

it could be regarded as “new-historicism.” These quests for universal knowledge and

 36

power and other ideas associated with it are references to Foucault and his writing on

the subjects of archaeology and knowledge genealogy.

The works of Guattari, Deleuze, Derrida, White, and the novels of Borges,

Barthes, Calvino, and Pynchon are alluded and referenced by Eco throughout his

novel The Name of the Rose. (Capozzi, ‘Libraries, encyclopedias and rhizomes:

Popularizing culture in Eco’s superfiction’, p. 135)

The blind librarian ‘created’ by Eco is a reference to the author Jorge Borges,

who wrote The Library of Babel. (Garrett, 379) As de Lauretis has stated, “here, in

this ‘tale of books’ personal and critical history merge in the literary topoi of the

journey, the sentimental education, the descent into Hades, the remembrance of things

past, the wake of reason; here the political inquest and the mythical quest are twined

securely with the Socratic dialogue, the conte a la Voltaire, the Conan Doyle mystery

story.” (De Lauretis, 16) Capozzi points out that Eco's library is extensive with

intertextuality to the point that the reader is both amazed and intimidated due to the

sheer number of books contained in it, and how it reminds them of how many they

have not read. (Capozzi, ‘Libraries, encyclopedias and rhizomes: Popularizing culture

in Eco's superfiction’, p. 130)

Eco's intertextuality even uses a similar kind of starting or presentation

amongst the most well known gothic books, The Castle of Otranto by Horace

Walpole. The Name of the Rose begins with somebody coming into ownership of an

original copy that has never been seen or distributed resonates with The Castle of

Otranto. At the beginning of The Name of the Rose starts with Adso quoting John,

“And in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was

God.”(11) Further biblical intertextualities are observed in the false pattern of the
 37

seven seals of the apocalypse taken from the Book of Revelation as a justification of

the need those murders committed by Jorge.

It is clear that what Adso recognised in his line of “books speak of books” is

that the words that are used in books, be it novels, reference books, or other works,

have been used by other books so creating a deeper and further meaning that carries

beyond just the context that is used in the work currently being read. (Cobley, 344)

Similarly to Mann, Eco uses intertextual quotations as a method of condensing

a large part of history and culture into a simple phrase. (Cobley, 342) This takes into

consideration a reader can comprehend complicated data in a couple of short words,

thus avoiding the need to duplicate bulks of information yet getting the writer’s point.

As Eco himself said in The Role of the Reader, each figure or object in the Cosmos

has a limited range of possibilities because “the meaning of allegorical figures and

emblems… is already prescribed by… encyclopaedias, bestiaries, and

lapidaries.”(Cobley, 343)

The Name of the Rose is not just a historically set book filled with

intertextuality, but a book that is used as a tribute to the writer Peirce, and his theory

of abduction. (Farronaro, 71) This has its roots from the detective manner that Eco has

projected in the novel through William and it was later combined with an essay

entitled Abduction in Uqbar. In this essay, he defines the terms deduction, induction,

and abduction in relation to making conclusions like that of a real detective.

He further explains,

Deduction proceeds from a true Rule and, by means of a case, predicts a Result

with absolute certainty. (There is a sack of beans. One pulls out a handful of

white beans. One deduces that the sack contains all white beans.) In the case of

an induction, from a number of results, one can infer that they are cases of the
 38

same rule and I arrive at the formulation of the rule (There is a sack of beans.

One pulls out a handful of white beans. One repeats this a number of times with

all white beans. Therefore the sack contains all white beans.). Abduction is

different and more risky, because I see a strange or unexplainable result and I

have to consider whether the result is the case of a rule (There is a sack of beans

on the table. Near it is a pile of white beans. One then conjects that the sack is

a sack of white beans.) (Farronaro, 72)

Therefore, Eco believes as Casaubon from the novel Foucault's Pendulum when he

said, "No piece of information is superior to any other. The power lies in having them

all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you only

have to want to find them." (Hutcheon, 9) Thus showing to the readers, Eco does not

invent but rewords, quotes and reorganises stories by taking pieces from other

sources. (Capozzi, ‘Libraries, encyclopedias and rhizomes: Popularizing culture in

Eco's superfiction’, p. 136)

Some critics such as de Lauretis there was a uncertainty about the validity of

The Name of the Rose by stating that it has no authorial voice and thus no authority of

its own, because every description, incident, character, and other device found within

it is an object trouve, something that is to be found first in some other place or work.

(De Lauretis, 19)

 39

CHAPTER IV

GOTHIC ELEMENTS IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE

Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose is a novel which is set historically in the

fourteenth century and deals with a story of a murder which happens in an Italian

monastery. The Elder monk, William of Baskerville, who arrives at the monastery,

becomes terrified only to find that the happenings were not just an ordinary crime but

was actually part of a prophecy. When one thing prompts another, there are other

bewildering things which uncoil one by one and at last, explained by William. By

type, the novel has not been considered to be under gothic tradition. Yet, the novel

really has numerous gothic components soaked up in it, both implicit and explicit.

This chapter attempts to uncover the components which may make Eco's epic as a

gothic novel.

In any type of artistic composition, the reader like the author could make a

certain change which may happen in the style, structure, and content of the

composition. A text's importance is in constant flux as the new critics contend does

change the substance of abstract work. While looking at it as a Gothic fiction since the

time of Horace Walpole to the present day, it has developed in a truly adaptable

manner as to take into account the requirements of contemporary occasions.

Therefore, there is dependably the hint of both early and present-day patterns

which are plainly observed upon a closer contemplation. This chapter considers that

gothic fiction can be viewed as a type of writing which has the patterns of both early

and contemporary writing. An artistic work like The Name of the Rose proves to be

useful to elucidate such a thought.

 40

Thus it tries to give models from the selected content and different writings to

enlighten that The Name of the Rose has gothic components put away in it which must

be brought out of the obscurity in the content. Gothic fiction has made some amazing

progress before the day in which awfulness composing was considered as gothic

composing as well. The Early gothic composition of the eighteenth century is to be

perceived, as gothic composing was just to have ruins, castles, monasteries,

and other different forms of horror, and absurdity, disobedience, paranormal elements

which commonly portrayed in the structure. These components were translated from

elements like structures which induced fear in the mind of the reader, to interior

components which depicted 'evil' in a specific structure by the beginning of the

nineteenth century.

Prior to this stage, gothic composing was a self-reflexive structure which

cleared the path for the investigation of what includes ‘evil’ to distinguish the political

standpoint of a gothic content. Since gothic writings had an enemy of illumination

thought which was regularly pronounced in works like, Frankenstein by Mary

Shelley, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Italian by Ann Radcliffe, The

Monk by Mathew Lewis and numerous others. Thus it was fundamental for the gothic

scholars to be basic in their view, so they shrouded their settings in images since they

were living in the time of reason which needed to drop all unreasonableness and

especially powerful components.

The gothic takes over a national explicit setting and furthermore speaks to

forbidden sexuality. So a content which is investigated under perfect calculation it

would prove that uncovers previously mentioned components could be gothic in

composition.
 41

An impressive example of the gothic fiction is The Name of the Rose by

Umberto Eco. Some of the gothic features like the narrative detailing the

discovery of the manuscript, the gloomy settings, dark vaults, and mysterious

death and the medieval architecture and the history run through the novel

retrace enlightenment rationality and religious superstitions. When William

and Adso arrived in the abbey there were a series of mysterious and macabre

deaths. These deaths are interpreted as a sign of the divine apocalypse or

diabolic machination, they foretell greater terrors for the superstitious

monastery community. (Mambrol)

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco can be investigated in such a light, in

order to uncover the gothic components hidden inside the narrative. The tale of The

Name of the Rose is set in a cloister in Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

William of Baskerville and an amateur, Adso of Melk land at the religious community

to research the homicide of a youthful cleric. The unforeseen development places

them in a predicament as to chase for a specific book from the taboo library of the

cloister and furthermore to experience the examination of back-to-back homicides

which occur on a similar note after their landing in the religious community. The tale

itself was written in Italian in 1980 as Ill Nome Della Rosa. It was later translated to

English in 1983. The setting of the novel in the fourteenth century itself is a system of

gothic composition as per Andrew Smith in Gothic Literature says that it is “…

somewhat fantasised version of the past … “(Smith, 2). The content is explicit to

writer’s nation and he glances back at the past by blending fiction with history,

explicit to that specific time span.

 42

The Forbidden Library

The library which stays as a ‘forbidden fruit’ all through the story which includes

numerous privileged insights as being told by the custodian Malachi who denies

passage to the library aside from him. The abbot of the cloister at the principal

experience with William, who wishes to enter the library, is denied passage

expressing that,

...to achieve the immense and holy task that enriches those walls devout men

have toiled for centuries, observing iron rules. The library was laid out on a plan

which has remained obscure to all over the centuries, and which none of the

monks is called upon to know. Only the librarian has received the secret, from

the librarian who preceded him and he communicates it, while still alive, to the

assistant librarian, so that death will not take him by surprise and rob the

community of the knowledge (Eco, 37).

The indefinite quality which stays all through the story including the library is

integral to the novel. The Librarian, the Assistant Librarian, the Abbot, and Jorges are

the main individuals who think about the property of the library and furthermore the

format of the library. The library is developed like a labyrinth from Greek mythology

with the goal that nobody would enter casually. Among the general population who

think about the library, it is just found before the close of the novel that Jorges

likewise thinks about the library back to front which is a twist in the story.

Every one of the inhabitants of the cloister is hesitant to enter it, as anybody

would not wish to enter a destroyed mansion, religious community or a spooky spot.

This is on the grounds that they do not completely comprehend the library, both the

physical structure and the psychological symbolism of the library since they have

never entered it. Edmund Burke in his A Philosophical Entry into the Origin of our
 43

Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful called this specific wonder as being great. The

above work is analysed by Andrew Smith in his book Gothic Literature,

Burke’s influential account of the sublime distinguished between sublimity

and beauty. The sublime was associated with grand feelings stimulated by

obscurity and highly dramatic encounters with the world in which a sense of

awe was paradoxically inspired by a feeling of incomprehension (Smith, 11).

The wonderful had the ability to influence its reader and incite dread in them since

they too like the others do not comprehend why the section to the library is restricted.

It’s a blended feeling of marvel and dread about what might be inside the library.

Burke’s contention is that individuals dread things which they do not

completely comprehend. There are plentiful models all through humankind’s history

like in Thunder and lightning itself turns into a matter of love since they did not

completely comprehend it and they passed on because of it. The clerics and Priests of

the religious community have been retold stories constantly about this alarming

library which will expel the person who enters ignoring the restriction. The abbot of

the religious community similarly attempts to forbid the inquisitor William, from

entering the library by saying that,

The library defends itself, immeasurable as the truth it houses, deceitful as the

falsehood it preserves. A spiritual labyrinth, it is also a terrestrial labyrinth.

You might enter and you might not emerge. And having said this, I would like

you to confirm to the rules of the abbey (Eco, 38)

Thus, Burke's basic content turns into a vital treatise in demonstrating that The

Name of the Rose as gothic fiction. He additionally says that sublimity brings out

different sentiments of uneasiness like privation, tremendousness, power, and lastly

obscurity. By the portrayal of William, the library is immense and nobody except the
 44

administrator and the associate book keeper, who possess the ability to it, are the ones

who completely comprehend it. There are different examples in which there are

exercises discovered that none ought to enter the library since at least one trespasser

begins asserting that the library housed numerous heavenly components adding to the

dread and fear in the religious community. One of the declarations is that there were

…rumours about a monk who decided to venture into the library during the

night, to look for something Malachi had refused to give him, and he saw

serpents, headless men, and men with two heads. He was nearly crazy when he

emerged from the labyrinth… (Eco, 89)

As Andrew Smith notes in his book Gothic Literature, the gothic authors made

artistic works which were dependent on hostile to illumination standards. When it was

the period of reason, people began legitimizing things and thus phantom, ghosts,

spectres were thought to have neither credibility nor reason. It was endeavoured to

consider the otherworldly components on the premise that they were silly. Thus it was

essential that the following changes were made in gothic composition. The Gothic

writers delved profoundly into the centre of their composition and began planting

images in them. Superficially, gothic composing would appear as though it involves

things which cannot be contemplated yet on the more profound side there developed a

political, social, or social setting which the author wished to depict.

Therefore The Name of the Rose can be followed with the use of overwhelming

imagery. The forbidden library, for instance, is really illegal in light of the fact that it

has learned. The library has a specific sort of information which others ought not to

lay their hands on. What is more, on the off chance that they do, they may begin

addressing God and his creation which is not normal from ministers. That may make

them a heresiarch. The learning being talked about here especially originates from
 45

Aristotle’s book of parody. The book should be genuine however the one and the

main duplicate has been lost until the end of time.

The clerical society especially the Benedictine restricts others from entering

the library. The clerical society likewise disallows one from snickering. In view of the

way that they guarantee in the novel that Jesus Christ never giggled and just villains

snickered. Therefore, Aristotle's book would give chuckling which is against the

ethical standards of the clerical request. Eco ponder upon such thoughts through his

novel.

Gothic fiction encourages such sort of complex topics for discussions. This

specific discussion occurs among Jorges and William as a sub-plot. On the more,

there is a discussion which continues for quite a long time in Christianity, particularly

in the clerical society. That is to serve individuals and reach to the affection for God

one must be modest or to have material riches or not? The Benedictines who contend

that profound individuals should not have any material riches annoys the restricting

party by asserting that they are apostates. This discussion goes on without an end in

the novel.

A discussion is dependably a sound method for settling issues and for this

situation, the discussion itself speaks to a gothic component as it is called attention to

that, Gothic writing is a style of writing which examines ways to embody complex

ideas or debates. Regardless of whether the argument is settled or not gothic writing

introduces itself as a ground for battling out perplexing and distinctive thoughts which

repudiate one another.

There are numerous occurrences in Eco’s novel which work as a conundrum.

Discussing a thought might be sufficiently straightforward to be invalid but there are

many intricate things in the novel which stay hidden. For instance, Benedictines are
 46

the ones who call individuals of wealth among the ministerial society, as blasphemers.

There are banters between two groups remarkably the Franciscans and the

Benedictines in endeavouring to be in contact at an end whether the congregation

ought to be rich or not.

It is not sure that the Benedictines who proclaim that the congregation ought

to be poor really do not pursue their lessons themselves. Since the monastery which

they are living itself is extremely rich and it utilizes hundred and fifty hirelings to

serve sixty of the profound dwellers in the abbey. This is self-opposing and invites

judgement from other religious communities. Henceforth by taking note of that

Andrew Smith in his work Gothic Literature, states that one of the key terms of gothic

writing is ‘ambivalence’ (Smith, 23) which is also a part of the postmodern period.

The novel is both professional and anti-aristocratic in its methodology. It creates a

thought, which is to be proven wrong and counteracts everything independent from

anyone else.

William as a Postmodern Man

William, the hero of the novel would not let himself be vanquished very effectively as

he is an inquisitor who has come to examine the riddle. William and his Assistant are

uncertain about the library, and its role in the macabre deaths happenings in the

monastery. Therefore, they attempt an adventure into the library to get a clear idea

about its complex maze structure. They unravel the riddles of the library one by one

and find out that Jorge was the killer who slaughtered everybody who attempted to

read that specific book. Whatever is left of the alarming things about headless men,

dead priests, and vision of damnation were all by-product of present-day science

which Jorges uses to keep individuals away from the library.

 47

In this way, every one of the legends including the library is broken as the

headless-men in the library were only an illusion made in a twisted mirror. The

individual who has no knowledge of this trick would feel alarmed of the picture. The

vision of hell, William clarifies that it originates from breathing in the smoke of a

specific herb when it is scorched. An educated researcher in the present day would

realize that a specific medication called LSD could make such hallucinations.

Furthermore, William clarifies the majority of the fantasies and crushes them with

reality. It is a postmodern feature of a gothic content which questions everything

which is held as truth. There is an inconspicuous distinction between innovation and

postmodernism. Andrew Smith notes in his book Gothic Literature,

While innovation concentrated on the divided idea of subjectivity (thus

misused the Gothic interest with broke selves), postmodernism speaks to

distrust about the terrific accounts, (for example, religion, for instance) which

once given social and good standards. In a contemporary, postmodern age one

can never again accept muddled, widespread, cases to the truth which, so the

contention goes, are supplanted by good relativism. Such a world is

characterized by the nonappearance of outright significance, and in writing,

this ends up showing through complex play in which story frames are run

together to make manufactured universes which closer view issues about

portrayal over any good or powerful concerns. As it were, postmodernism is

by all accounts particularly fit the Gothic since it doubts the idea that one

possesses a sound or generally dynamically judicious world. (Smith, 141).

William stands declaration to the objectivity of this novel rather than an innovator in

approach... Eco gives the novel a postmodernist touch by letting William find

independence from everyone who thought that he was misled by the sacred writings
 48

that the homicide was done by an enemy of Christ. William discovers that this was

not valid and found the criminal by sheer chance, as he was deceived.

Consequently, an abstract work like The Name of the Rose investigated under

the light of gothic style of writing outlines, not just the components which can be

found in the early gothic fiction like ruins, strongholds, tall towers, priests, aristocrats.

It also has components of different methods of gothic writing which were included in

it as the structure systematically by the creative ability and inventiveness journalists

who contributed towards it. Overall, a gothic content on all occasions is inclined to

change and the gothic genre is advancing continuously which is embodied by this

exploration.
 49

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

T.S. Eliot speaks about the importance of the dead writers and their writings in the

contemporary literature,

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance,

his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.

You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison,

among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical,

criticism.

The novel The Name of the Rose can be considered as a postmodern gothic

fiction rich in Christian philosophy and medievalism of fourteenth century Italy. The

intricate web of connection of past with present is very much evident in this meta text.

As Eliot mentions about the influence of past on the present and present on the past,

this novel is a perfect example for this statement. Every dialogue or moments in the

text directly or indirectly refer to another classical text or idea presented in those

texts. Michel Foucault had described intertextuality in a different way,

The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and

the last full-stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it

is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other

sentences: it is a node within a network.

As Patricia Waugh says in her essay From Metafiction, “In the fiction they are

required in order to explore the relationship between the world of the fiction and the

world outside the fiction.”(240)

 50

In a sense metafiction rests on a version of the Heisenbergian uncertainty

principle: an awareness that ‘for the smallest building blocks of matter, every

process of observation causes a major disturbance’...it is impossible to

describe an objective world because the observer always changes the

observed...for a while Heisenberg believed one could at least describe, if not a

picture of nature, then a picture of one’s relation to nature, metafiction shows

the uncertainty even of this process. (240)

This novel is very much rich in intertextual elements like the name of the protagonist

resonates with Doyle’s novel Sherlock Holmes. The core text even had multiple

translators over many centuries. As Patricia Waugh quotes,

Metafiction may concern itself, then, with a particular conventions of the

novel, to display the process of their construction (for example, John Fowles’s

use of ‘omniscient author’ convention in The French Lieutenant’s Women... in

a form of parody, comment on a specific work or fictional mode as used by

John Gardner’s Grendel...Such novels attempts to create alternative linguistic

structures or fictions which merely imply the old forms by encouraging the

reader to draw on his or her knowledge of traditional literary conventions

when struggling to construct a meaning for the new text. (241)

The novel has its plot revolving around Christian philosophy, fragmentation,

homosexuality like gay relationship as a taboo, isolation, conflict between reason and

religion, dilemma of human mind to embrace the truth at the time of crisis, etc. point

towards some of the prominent features that distinguish postmodern fiction from other

literary movements. Even though the novel has a medieval setting in general, it also

reflects some of the key problems that haunt the twentieth century. Therefore, this

novel is a part of “Metafiction” as Patricia Waugh had stated in the above quote. The
 51

novel has more evidences of postmodern concepts as it mainly embraces the idea of

fragmentation and uses it to create playful texts that reflect and explore the chaos of

the world. There are no longer attempts to find some sort of “grand narratives,” in the

works as well as they were generally had a sceptical viewpoint.

The Name of the Rose is an open work as it gives an open ending to the readers

to interpret and come to a conclusion about the different complex thoughts put

forward by the writer himself. Richard Flanagan reflects on the text as an open work

of art,

...this sense, this feeling of communication, would at moments overwhelm him.

At such times he had the sensation that there was only one book in the universe,

and that all books were simply portals into this greater on going work...an

inexhaustible, beautiful world that was not imaginary but the world as it truly

was, a book without beginning or end.

Umbertino says in the novel, “the sickness of the abbey is something else: seek

it among those who know too much, not in those who know nothing.” (64) The novel

gives a glimpse into the dangers of knowing too much in the medieval society. This

also finds its reflection in our postmodern society. The readers are made to reflect on

the truth that only a minor change has happened over the past centuries as even in this

age of technology there is no free access to all information like that of medieval

period. William also resonate the above viewpoint of Umbertino like “there is no

progress, no revolution of ages, in the history of knowledge, but at most a continuous

and sublime recapitulation.” (399) This asks the readers the question whether

cognitive abilities of humans really changed over the years.

As the Abbot points out that “the librararian protects [books] not only against

mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of
 52

oblivion, the enemy of the truth.” (38) Every human only fears one thing that is

oblivion after his or her death. This truth is the driving forces behind many works of

literature as they want the future generation to get a glimpse of the society and life

they had never experienced. Thus one can say that intertextuality can be a way to

preserve the past literature and writers. As a result readers get a chance to refer these

texts and form a larger idea discussed in the core text.

The fragmented postmodern world had come to realisation as William says in

the novel, “the truth of the simple has already been transformed into the truth of the

powerful.”(205) Here the structures of power decides the truth and it has become

more of a luxury enjoyed by the powerful people in the society. This thought also

finds expression in the novel The Name of the Rose as the Jorge, who holds all power

of knowledge.

However, the novel also gives a hopeful reminder to fragmented postmodern

world about the power of love in the world blinded by power and chaos. Umbertino’s

stand on what is pure love can observed in the novel,

...there is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold

suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing

exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does...the soul plunges through

love into an immense abyss. (230- 231)

Thus the novel The Name of the Rose can be considered as postmodern gothic

novel. The readers are made active participant rather than just a causal reader by Eco

as he presents some of the most debated philosophical questions in the history of

humankind. Thus the novel gives a open space for interpretations as thoughts of

humans can with the passage of time and no two people can think alike also adds to

the complexity of the thoughts expressed in the novel.

 53

WORKS CITIED

Primary source

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Translated by William Weaver, Martin

Secker& Warburg, 1992.

Secondary Sources

Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. Routeledge, 2011.

Bob Doyle. “postmodernism.” The information philosopher,

www.informationphilosopher.com/articles/postmodernism.html

---. “abduction.” The information philosopher,

www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/abduction.html

Botting, Fred, and Dale Townshed. Gothic. Routledge, 2004.

Borges, Jorge Louis. Collected Fictions. Translated by Andrew Hurley, Penguin,

1999.

Braswell, Laurel. “Meta-Psychomachia in Eco's ‘The Name of the Rose.’” Mosaic: A

Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, vol. 20, no. 2, 1987, pp.

1–11, www.jstor.org/stable/24777607.

Burke, John J., Jr. “The Romantic Window and the Postmodern Mirror: The

Medieval Worlds of Sir Walter Scott and Umberto Eco.” In Scott in Carnival,

edited by Alexander J H and David Hewitt. Aberdeen: Association for Scottish

Literature Studies, 1993, pp. 556-568.

Capozzi, Rocco. “Palimpsests and Laughter: The Dialogical Pleasure of Unlimited

Intertextuality in The Name of the Rose.” Italica, vol. 66, no. 4, 1989, pp.

412–428. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/479254.

Carr, Edward Hallett. What is History? Random House,1961.

 54

Catania, Thomas M. “What Is the Mystery of The Name of the Rose?” New Catholic

World, vol.228, 1985, pp. 157-61.

Cobley, Evelyn. “Closure and Infinite Semiosis in Mann's ‘Doctor Faustus’ and Eco's

‘The Name of the Rose.’” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 26, no. 4,

1989, pp. 341–361. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40246688.

Eco, Umberto, “Borges and My Anxiety of Influence.” On Literature. translated by

Martin Mc Laughlin, Mariner Books, 2005, pp118-35.

---. “Prelude to a Palimpsest.” Naming the Rose: Essays on Eco’s ‘The Name of the

Rose,’ edited by M. Thomas Inge, UP of Mississippi, 1988, pp. 11-15.

---. The Open Work. Translated by Anna Cancogni, Harvard UP, 1989.

Fairbank, Benjamin A, Jr. “William of Baskerville and Sherlock Holmes: A Study in

Identity.” The Baker Street Journal: An Irregular Quarterly of Sherlockiana,

vol. 40, no. 2 ,1990.

Farronato, C. “The Theory of Abduction and The Name of the Rose.” In Semiotics,

Spinks, C. W. & Deely, J., 1999, pp. 71-81.

Garrett, Jeffrey. “Missing Eco: On Reading ‘The Name of the Rose’ as Library

Criticism.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, vol. 61,

no. 4, 1991, pp. 373–388. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4308639.

Glynn, Ruth. “Presenting the Past: The Case of Il nome della rosa Italianist.” Journal

of the Department of Italian Studies, vol.17, no.1, 1997, pp. 99-116, DOI:

10.1179/ita.1997.17.1.99
 55

Hitchcock, James. “War of the Rose: The Historical Context of ‘The Name of the

Rose.” Crisis Magazine, 1 Jan. 1987. www.crisismagazine.com/1987/war-of-

the-rose-the-historical-context-of-the-name-of-the-rose.

Hutcheon, Linda. “Eco’s Echoes: Ironizing the (Post) Modern” Diacritics, vol. 22, no.

1, 1992, pp 2-16,

http:/tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/19215/1/Hutcheon-5.pdf.

Key, Jonathan. “Maps and Territories: Eco Crossing the Boundaries.” Illuminating

Eco: On the Boundaries of Interpretation, edited by Ross, Charlotte, Ross,

Charlotte, and Rochelle Sibley Eco, Umberto, Routledge , 2004. pp13-25.

Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Postmodern gothic.” Literary Theory and Crticism, 2

September 2018, https://literariness.org/2018/09/02/postmodern-gothic/

Murthy, Nishevita J. Historicizing Fiction/Fictionalizing History: Representation in

Selected Novels of Umberto Eco and Orhan Pamuk. Cambridge Scholars,

2014.

Phillips, Gerald. “Intertextuality: Words, Literature, and the World.” CEA Magazine:

A Journal of the College English Association, Middle Atlantic Group, vol.17,

2004-2005, pp. 40-52.

Pravadelli, Veronica, and Norma, Bouchard edited by. Umberto Eco's alternative :

the politics of culture and the ambiguities of interpretation. Peter Lang, 1999.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Fragmentation." Shmoop University, Inc. Last modified

November 11, 2008, https://www.shmoop.com/postmodern-

literature/fragmentation-characteristic.html.

Smith, Andrew. Gothic Literature. Edinburgh UP, 2007.

Viegnes, Michel. "Naming the Rose: Eco, Medieval Signs and Modern Theory, and:

Naming the Rose: Essays on Eco's "The Name of the Rose" (review)." MFS
 56

Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 35 no. 2, 1989, pp. 362-364. Project

MUSE,doi:10.1353/mfs.0.0342

Waugh, Patricia. “From Metafiction.” Postmodernism and the Contemporary Novel:

A Reader, edited by Bran Nicol. Edinburgh UP, 2002, pp.240-241.

View publication stats