Eco's The Name of the Rose: Bricolage and montage of cultural history. (2024)

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Abstract

Umberto Eco loved analogies, was an artist of the deja-vu and agreat bricoleur in architecting a pastiche of genre and a collage ofintertextual anxieties of influences. I begin with his inspiration fromone of his favorite and most influential writers, James Joyce, and willdose with the influence of his all-time favorite movie, Casablanca.Eco's remarkable study of Joyce's works appeared in the firstedition of Opera aperta. The influence of this meticulous analysis ofpuns, riddles, metonymy, and interactive metaphors resurfaces with hisencyclopedic knowledge in The Name of the Rose. My argument is that Eco,keeping the famous Irish writer in mind, structured his own novels asdynamic epistemologica! metaphors. In addition to the skillful use ofparodies, irony, puns, metaphors, erudition, semiosis, details, andcomic relief, The Name of the Rose reveals many of Eco's narrativestrategies. Socratic dialogues, intertextual frames, citations,palimpsests, and chains of associations are at the center of hispossible world of fiction where History and stories intertwine. From thecult movie Casablanca Eco learned how an intertextual collage of clicheswas used constructively: "two cliches make us laugh, but a hundredcliches move us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talkingamong themselves and celebrating a reunion." In The Rose weencounter cliches, archetypes, and familiar quotations that withEco's encyclopedic knowledge contribute to making his first hybridcognitive narrative an excellent example of docere et delectare.

Keywords

analogies, auctoritas, cliches, cognition, deja-vu, Eco'smetaphorical discourse, erudition, History, hybridization, images,irony, Joyce, pastiche, semiosis

In the late 1950s Umberto Eco compieteci a remarkable study ofJames Joyce that appeared in the first edition of Opera aperta (Eco,1962, 1989a). (1) A revised edition was published in 1965 as Le poetichedi Joyce (Eco, 1966). The English translation, The Aesthetics ofChaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce, carne out in 1982 and again in1989 (Eco, 1982, 1989b). The influence of this meticulous analysis ofpuns, riddles, metonymy, and metaphors resurfaces with his encyclopedicknowledge in Il nome della rosa (1980, 1983). (2) During the debatebetween William, Venantius, and Jorge of Burgos regarding Aristotle andmetaphors, we recognize an echo of The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: "Thequestion, in fact, was whether metaphors and puns and riddles, whichalso seem conceived by poets for sheer pleasure, do not lead us tospeculate on things in a new and surprising way" (Eco, 1983: 101).There is also the element of circularity that links the beginning andthe ending of both Finnegans Wake and The Name of the Rose, but let uslook briefly at some of Eco's thoughts on Joyce which areapplicable to The Rose.

In "The Epiphany as an Epistemological Metaphor," (3) Ecomakes a key observation:

The work thus becomes a grandiose epistemological metaphor. It is ametaphor--not a literal model but an analogy. Rather, it is a field ofanalogies, for Finnegans Wake does not embody one particulardescription of the world but utilizes contradictory images from diverseframeworks. It is as if the author has sensed new ways of seeing thingsand mirrored these different points of view, simultaneously, in thelinguistic structure. (Eco, 1989a:74)

In The Role of the Reader (Eco, 1979) we find other interestingcomments, such as: "Since Finnegans Wake is itself a metaphor forthe process of unlimited semiosis, I have chosen it for metaphoricreasons as a field of inquiry in order to cover certain itineraries ofknowledge" (p. 70); and, "the pun... constitutes a particularform of metaphor founded on subsequent chains of metonymies" (p.72). Lastly, in "Joyce, Semiosis and Semiotics," in The Limitsof Interpretation (1990), Eco states in a nutshell: "The wholeJoycean opus is a living example of a cultural universe ruled by thelaws of Unlimited Semiosis" (Eco, 1990: 142).

Metaphor, puns, frames, structure, knowledge, images, and field ofanalogies are also the main topics in my treatment of The Rose. Myinitial argument is that Eco, keeping the famous Irish writer in mind,generated his own novels as dynamic epistemological metaphors. Eco haswritten extensively on the interactive and cognitive function ofmetaphor, citing works from Aristotle to Max Black and Paul Ricoeur, aswell as on aesthetics in the Middle Ages, especially in Art and Beautyin the Middle Ages (Eco, 1985) (4) and Metafora e conoscenza nelmedioevo-now part of Scritti sul pensiero medievale (Eco, 2012)--acollection of over 1300 pages on the Middle Ages for over half acentury. And to these I would add his panoramic and informativeintroduction in Volume I of Il Medioevo: Barbari Cristiani Musulmani, inthe Encyclomedia edition (2010), where again Eco explains how in theMiddle Ages symbols, metaphors, and allegory were often notdifferentiated. They were all effective vehicles of association. See forexample in The Rose how William explains difficult concepts andtheoretical notions to Adso through metaphors and images of allegory(pp. 224-225). Setting aside a discussion on symbols and allegory, myfocus will center mainly on Eco's strategy of suggesting meaningsthrough the power of images and the semiosis of chains of metonymic andmetaphoric cultural discourses.

Eco was an amazing observer of society and cultural phenomena. Hewas an acute flaneur, always noticing and registering. As Eco wouldagree, it is important to summarize the general zeitgeist when in 1978he began to construct his first possible world of fiction. (5) Thesocial, politicai, philosophical, and literary realities of the time arean integrai element of the encyclopedia of information that contributesto making The Rose an outstanding educating and entertaining experience.I am referring to the cultural milieu that sees literature associatedwith French literary theories and cultural gurus (e.g. Barthes,Foucault, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, and Derrida), decentered structures, theinfluence of the media and popular culture, disorder, and conspiracytheories, while Italy was undergoing a decade of kidnappings, terrorism,suspicion, and fear. The 1970s witness a crisis of reason, objectivity,and ideologies, and renewed interest in Nietzsche. Gianni Vattimoprepares II pensiero debole (1983; Weak Thought) that includedEco's article on the Porphyrian tree, labyrinths, and rhizome. Andin the world of fiction we see Borgesian metaphysical narratives,secrets, and paranoia, as in Thomas Pynchon's novels, andself-reflexive narratives like Italo Calvino's If on a Winter Nighta Traveler (1979). It is also important to note that Eco was wellacquainted with French and Italian translations of Bakhtin's works.Therefore, it is not surprising that The Rose is, among many otherthings, a mosaic of quotations with references to poliphony, the Coenacypriani, the world upside down, laughter, and the carnival. Bakhtin isa reminder that a text is not an isolated object but an intersection ofvoices from our cultural history, and that polyphony and intertextualitygo hand in hand.

In engineering The Name of the Rose, Eco intertwined a myriad ofBloomian anxieties of influences. (6) To Joyce, Borges, and the Italianhistorical novelist A Manzoni, we can add thinkers like CS Peirce andFoucault, narratologists like G Genette and W Booth, a vast array ofancient and modem authors, and experts of detective fiction from Poe toAgatha Christie. Not to be overlooked are two early icons ofpostmodernism: Leslie Fiedler, who advocated "closing the gap"between erudite and pop culture, and John Barth, who in 1967 popularizedthe concept of recycling in a "Literature of Exhaustion"followed by a "Literature of Replenishment." (7) These andother names are mentioned in the Postscript to the Name of the Rose(Eco, 1984a). I am also convinced that Calvino was a model for Eco. Theyshared the same views on the novel in terms of "lightness",networks of relationships, and cognitive experiences. Also, bothreflected the qualities outlined in the closing lines of"Multiplicity" in Six Memosfor the Next Millennium (Calvino,1988):

Who are we [...] if not a combinatorial of experiences, information,books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, alibrary, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everythingcan be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable. (Calvino, 1988: 124)

Moreover, both felt that "divertire e una cosa seria"("to entertain is a serious activity"). (8) On the other hand,as indicated in Six Waiks in the Fictional Woods (Eco, 1994b), whileCalvino was a minimalist, Eco was a maximalist--apart from his lastnovel, Numero Zero (2015), all his novels are around 500 pages. Andwhereas Calvino preferred "quickness," Eco enjoyedlingering--indugio? William states that what frightens him the most is"haste" (p. 429), and reminds Adso: "First of all, Adso,we must try not to let ourselves be overcome by haste" (p. 241).Indeed, it is ironie that Adso at the beginning of "Day One"should be worried about "lingering too long over marginalia"(p. 35). In a Tristram Shandy fashion, digressions abound from theopening pages of the novel where we find a long historical account ofthe feuds among religious orders, popes, and kings, a fascinatingdescription of William's conjectures about the horse Brunellus, adetailed map of the layout, structures, and architecture (10) of theentire abbey, and frequent addresses to readers. In fact, Adso'snarration at once entices and metafictionally distances readers, whobecome self-conscious of their roles as spectators and investigators.For Eco, lingering in the woods of narratives, enjoying descriptions anddigressions, widens our knowledge of the world and gives us a fullerunderstanding of a novel. It is also a slowing down technique necessaryfor taking "inferential walks".

The Name of the Rose focuses on some of Eco's favorite topicssuch as formative journeys, quests for a grail, knowledge as power,ideas, auctoritas, interpreting signs, intertextuality, and makinganalogies between past history and our present. It took Eco on averagefour to six years to write a novel but only two to complete The Rose.This was possible because it deals with theological, philosophical, andliterary works that he had studied in the preparation of his 1956 thesison the aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. Eco was well acquainted with theworks of illustrious medievalists like Johan Huizinga, E Robert Curtius,Etienne Gilson, and especially of his dose friend Jacques Le Goff onhistory, culture, and society in the Middle Ages. I must add thatimportant background material used for The Rose can be gathered in hiscollections of so-called scritti occasionali ("occasion alwritings" is Eco's expression referring to his lectures, briefessays, and journalistic writings) in Dalla periferia dell'impero(1977) and Sugli specchi e altri saggi (1985). I am referringspecifically to essays that he incorporated in his first novel,especially the writings on Thomas Aquinas, Pirandello and humor, Borges,Huizinga, the film Casablanca, "Dante's epistola XIII, onmedieval allegory and modem symbolism," the apocalypse of Beatus ofLiebana, and of course "Verso un nuovo medioevo," revised as"Dreaming of the Middle Ages" in Travels in Hyperreality(1990).

Thus it is understandable that his first novel takes place in 1327in an abbey dominated by a library, that the library is structured likea labyrinth, that at its center there is a forbidden book on comedyprotected by a dogmatic blind monk who believes in censoring texts thatundermine authority, and that the opinionated monk, anti-Aristotle andanti-laughter, should be called Jorge of Burgos in order to recali, withirony, the famous Argentinian writer Borges, the icori of metaphysicalstories about encyclopedia, mirrors, apocryphal texts, libraries, andlabyrinths. And of course, Jorge of Burgos hides in thelabyrinth-library behind a mirrored door. By the way, in Day Five like ablurb on a book cover, Adso summarizes the plot of the novel: "itis a story of theft and vengeance among monks of scant virtue!...Because of a forbidden book" (p. 439).

In The Rose Eco historicizes debates surrounding realism,nominalism, science, theology, and philosophy that continue today. InFoucault's Pendulum, he treats hermetic drift from the Middle Agesto the present and paranoid readings encouraged by deconstructionism.These and other issues are often narrated with subtle irony and parodiesthat present a problem of ambivalence for readers who want to be clearabout Eco's own position on religious, philosophical, and literaryarguments. Jesuits have denounced Eco's novels, however GuidoSommavilla's negative criticism of Eco's "allegronominalismo" deserves some attention. In the Jesuit periodical LaCivilta Cattolica, (11) Sommavilla questions William's nominalismand nihilism, underlines the last exchange between William and Jorgewhere they accuse one another of being the devil, and scrutinizesAdso's conclusion.

And so, who is the devil? Dolcino, the Pope in Avignon, BernardoGui, to name a few. And who is the Antichrist? Ubertino has a long listthat includes Roger Bacon (p. 80). And where is the truth--a wordrepeated frequently in the novel? Swallowing his intellectual pride, toAbo William answers: "Nowhere, at times" (p. 176), suggestingthat many opposites tend to cancel each other. For example, there isvery little difference between the faith of devoted mystics and thefaith of heretics (pp. 73, 76, 99). About the accused heretics, Williamcan only say: "They were all right in their way, and all weremistaken", to which Adso reacts "why don't you take aposition, why won't you tell me where the truth is?" (p. 232).At the end of the novel, William cites Wittgenstein: "The onlytruths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away" (p. 541).And is Adso's faith shaken for stating: "Isn't affirmingGod's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard toHis own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does notexist?" (p. 492)? But is he a nihilist for citing the German verse"Gott ist ein lauter Nichts"? The incomplete anachronisticverses of the mystic poet Angelus Silesius on the nature of God can infact be understood to mean that "God is a pure nothing." (12)Setting aside that Eco may also be alluding ironically toNietzsche's The Will to power, (13) let us listen to Adso'sclosing words: "I shall sink into the divine shadow, in a dumbsilence and an ineffable union, and in this sinking all equality and allinequality shall be lost, and in that abyss my spirit will lose itself' (p. 501).

Adso is left with many doubts that will remain unresolved with hisdeath. He is burdened by contradictions (14) that he heard from Ubertinoabout women, Dolcino, and the poverty of the church, from the picaresquetales of Salvatore (pp. 215-221) and most of all from William'sexplanations about science, truth, reality, Roger Bacon, William ofOccam, reason, and faith. William was an excellent mentor and animpressive investigator but he doesn't instili a lot of optimism inAdso. He admits that Occam has sown doubts in his mind (p. 234) andagrees not to have an answer to many queries and issues, adding withsharp irony, 'if I did I would teach theology in Paris" (p.344). Stefano Tani (1984) includes William among the doomedanti-detectives. This is not surprising. William does not save theforbidden book, does not succeed in mediating Franciscans and papaldelegates, he concedes defeat to Bernardo Gui (15) and admits that hehas solved the mystery of the forbidden book by chance, concluding:"Where is all my wisdom, then? I behaved, stubbornly, pursuing asemblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no orderin the universe" (p. 541). (16)

On this last point, I argue that while William is debunking thenotion that the murdering in the abbey followed the biblical structureof the seven trumpets of the apocalypse--the a priori "apocalypticpattern" is in fact a red herring (a familiar strategy of detectivefiction) first suggested by Ubertino and Alinardo--Eco is alsoindirectly refuting Levi-Strauss' ontological structuralism that hehad examined in La struttura assente (Eco, 1968). We recali Eco'sfamous statement: "E struttura quella che non c'e ancora"(p. 323). I disagree with Eco's critics who call him an absoluterelativist or a craftsman. Eco is a creative writer, (17) with his ownstyle which he defines as such: "To the realm of style (as a way ofgiving forni) belongs not only the use of language... but also the wayof deploying narrative structures, portraying characters, andarticulating points of view." (18) Eco did not accept simpleeither-or interpretations, but, as demonstrated in The Limits ofInterpretation (Eco, 1990), neither did he advocate infiniteinterpretations. I believe that Eco was not apocalyptic or entirelyintegrated, and that unlike his trust in semiotics and the rights of thetext he never fully embraced the death of the author, theneoavanguardia, structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism,Vattimo's Weak Thought, or Maurizio Ferraris' New Realism,(19) and I would add the Catholic Church, the Communist party, and theinternet that he had once defined as the mother of all libraries.

Eco kept an ironie criticai distance from all trends. However, wemust ask if by playing with double coded postmodernism (an expressionthat Eco borrowed from Charles J Jencks on postmodern architecture) herelied too much on double coding irony and parodies. On the other hand,through irony and parody Eco kept a distance from characters andstories. His irony, like his skepticism, was creative and liberating.Irony and parody were for Eco what "Perseus' shield" wasfor Calvino--an instrument of distance necessary for reflecting realityindirectly. When in the midst of the 1968 revolution Eco was asked togive his views on the role of organic intellectuals, he praisedCalvino's conte philosophique, The Baron in the Tree (1957), citingthe importance of the distance with which the protagonist Cosimo ofPiovasco observes reality from up high on trees. (20)

Eco's strategy of mixing reality and fiction, story andhistory, and erudition and pop culture runs throughout all of hisnovels. But his applications of irony, ambiguity, and openness are notfor all readers. We recali how Adso defines William's irony andpoints out that the ironic retort "Truly this is the sweetest oftheologies" (p. 167) is not understood by Abo. And we have seen howafter Foucault's Pendulum and The Prague Cemetery some criticsaccused Eco of relativism and antisemitism. To his defense, Eco is notresponsible for outlandish interpretations or for not proposing absolutetruths. It is sufficient to read Six Walks in the Fictional Woods andseveral Bustine di Minerva on conspiracy theories to understand hiscoherent criticism of racism, lies, paranoia, and forgeries. (21)Furthermore, in Opera aperta Eco had already explained how openness,discontinuity, and plurality of meanings are elements of contemporaryaesthetics that reflect our society:

contemporary art can be seen as an epistemologica! metaphor. Thediscontinuity of phenomena has called into question the possibility ofa unified, definitive image of our universe; art suggests a way for usto see the world in which we live. The open work assumes the task ofgiving us an image of discontinuity. It does not narrate it; it is it. (Eco, 1989a: 90)

In his witty fashion, in an early 'occasionai writing',speaking about lies and truths in the media, he concludes: "Onemust get used from childhood to having confused ideas, in order to haveclear ideas." (22 ) I like to think that Eco has always beenfaithful to William's words: "Books are not made to bebelieved, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, wemust not ask ourselves what it says but what it means" (p. 355),and, "To know what one book says you must read others (p. 321).Readers, just as Adso, must be aware that in Eco's novels often Dete fabula narratur (pp. 188, 322; this book is also about you), and likeAdso citing St. Augustine, lolle et lege (p. 547). Contrary toBenno's credo that in the abbey they live for books away from aworld dominated by "disorder and decay" (p. 131), William,like Eco, does not believe in knowledge for knowledge's sake; hehas faith in truths derived from books--they are a source of knowledgeand information for everyone. He states emphatically: "The truthshall make us free" (p. 398). Christians are expected to recognizethis citation, repeated twice, from John's Gospel 8:32 (pp. 306,398), (23) as well as many other biblical references like "The Songof Songs: and especially the 'Book of Revelation'" and"the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh atthe truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learningto free ourselves from insane passion for the truth" (p. 540,emphasis in originai).

In The Role of the Reader (1979), Eco displayed his knowledge ofnarratology. Later, in Postscript to the Name ofthe Rose (1984) and inthe article "Small worlds" (Eco, 1989c), Eco underlined afundamental rule in generating his possible worlds as a culturalconstruct: "Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like thestory told by Genesis [...] What I mean is that to tell a story you mustfirst of all construct a world, furnished as much as possible, down tothe slightest details" (Eco, 1984: 20, 23). Indeed, the importanceof details made Eco walk away from JJ Annaud's set during thefilming of The Rose and decide that his future novels would not beadapted for the screen while he was alive. Eco maintained that "Afictional text has an ontology of its own which must be respected"(Eco, 1989c: 60)--so too for its rules and constraints, as he alsolearned from Raymond Queneau and the French OULIPO. Eco addressed thefunction of structure and form in Opera aperta, La struttura assente,and in the article "Le sporcizie della forma," where hediscusses Luigi Pareyson's Estetica? (24)

Pareyson's studies of Immanuel Kant, and above all hisEstetica. Teoria della formativita (1954), cannot be overlooked whenexamining Eco's process in generating a world of fiction. Alreadyin Le poetiche di Joyce we read: "In effect, a work of art is aform" (Eco, 1989b: 17). And when Elio Vittorini, in the journal IlMenabo (1962), was advocating new modes of writing in order to examinethe alienating effects of technology and industrialization in Italy, Ecoarticulated his argumentation in terms of "form and formativity associal commitment", expanded in the revised second edition of Operaaperta. (25) In fact, Le poetiche di Joyce, Opera aperta, and his essays"The Narrative Structures in Ian Fleming" and "Functionand Sign: Semiotics of Architecture" indicate that Eco'sinterests in structure and form owe a great deal to his universityprofessor.

The Rose is an engaging example of structure and form asepistemological and textual strategies. Through a process of bricolageand montage Eco constructed his novel with drawings, time frames,intertextuality, theological and philosophical queries, history,circularity, digressions, suspense, self-reflexive elements, and comicrelief. But we must remember that while the narrator imagines and drawsthe map of a place, the unnamed abbey (a possible world of fiction witha nameless woman), before describing it in detail, the world of theMiddle Ages that surrounds the abbey is a real one, it is the worldrecalled and reconstructed by Eco the medievalist. Furthermore, whileillustrating, and playing with Bakhtinian dialogism and dialogicdiscourses, he exploits Socratic dialogues modeled after St.Augustine's De Magistro, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, andCalvino's Invisible Cities. Eco was not afraid of flaunting hisastonishing encyclopedic competence, and nor was he concerned withinformation overload, because he believed strongly that only knowledgecan save us. This was the main message in his speech delivered at MilanoExpo 2015.

Milan Kundera in the opening pages of The Art of the Novel (2003)affirms: "The sole raison d'etre of a novel is to discoverwhat only the novel can discover. A novel that does not uncover ahitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is thenovel's only morality." I believe that Umberto Eco'snovels are ethical and moral because they reflect a social conscienceand encourage readers to expand their knowledge of society and culturalhistory. William has strong words for Benno, Abo, and Jorge who censorand abuse knowledge: "Knowledge is used to conceal, rather than toenlighten. I don't like it. A perverse mind presides over the holydefense of the library" (p. 201). Earlier he had said: "oftenthe treasures of learning must be defended, not against the simple but,rather, against other learned men" (p. 108). And to Jorge heresponds "the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith withoutsmile, truth that is never seized by doubt" (p. 524).

It is worth emphasizing that our cultural anthropologist had theenviable talent of docere et delectare driven by his eagerness foracquiring and disseminating knowledge. It is a passion that heverbalizes admirably in his novels, essays, and illustrated histories ofBeauty, Ugliness, Lists, and Legendary Lands. His ingenious art ofteaching while entertaining encourages even non-model readers, who donot read The Rose in a library or next to a computer connected to theinternet ready to take inferential walks, to learn from a myriad oftopics such as semiotics, logie, nominalism, universals, allegory,monastic life, empire versus papacy, Biblical passages, and all sorts ofheretical groups and medieval events, including the banning of the Orderof Templars, by Pope Clement and King Philip of France, that become acentrai element in Foucault 's Pendulum.

In The Role of the Reader we learn that "frames" andfamiliar scripts (sceneggiature) are vehicles of knowledge containinginformation. Eco refers to them as condensed stories and virtualrealities (Eco, 1979: 20-21). They are sources of common knowledge andhelpful tools for making mental comparisons. Like Kantian a prioriexperiences and categories, they too are cognitive instruments forinterpretation and analogical thinking. In the text we find thisinteresting explanation of metaphors:

When faced with metaphor, we sense that it is turning into a vehicle ofknowledge, and intuitively (in surveying the subjacent metonymicchains) we grasp its legitimacy; but until analysis has brought thesesubjacent metonymic chains to light, we must recognize that metaphorsimply additional knowledge. (Eco, 1979: 87)

Also: "There are cases in which from one or more metaphors theinterpreter is led to an allegorical reading, or to a symbolicinterpretation, where the boundaries between metaphor, allegory, andsymbol can be very imprecise" (Eco, 1979: 124). And in Semioticsand the Philosophy of Language we read: "a metaphor allows us totravel along the pathways of semiosis and to discover the labyrinths ofthe encyclopedia" (Eco, 1984b: 126-127). Pertinent to ourdiscussion is also a comment in Six Walks in the Fictional Woods:"one of the least analyzed of rhetorical figures is Hypotyposis.How can a verbal text put something before our eyes as we could see it?(Eco, 1994b: 70). Eco explains Hypotyposis and ekphrasis in "FarVedere," in Dire quasi la stessa cosa (Eco, 2003: 197-212). But itis in the article "Les semaphores sous la pluie" (26) that heoutlines the differences between naming and describing the visiblegiving examples of different techniques of hypotyposis including thelist, adding that hypotyposis asks the reader to recali their own visualexperiences.

Eco's Constant attention to the relationships between wordsand images leads us to his fondness for figurative language--il parlarfigurato? (1) His lifelong enthusiasm for a visual culture made ofimages, comic books, graphic novels, art, movies, and illustrated textsis cleverly illustrated in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. And letus not forget his hobby of drawing. Eco stated that he would startnarrating following a seminai image in his head--his drawings inpreparation for The Rose are now public. (28 ) I wish to point out hispractice of constructing and suggesting images for cognitiveassociations. Eco liked to combine the notion of pictura est laicorumliteratura with literatura est laicorum picture and, I would add, seeinga mental film while reading a novel. In The Rose we meet Abbot Suger whobelieves in making cathedrals like books for the illiterate, andHonorius (29) for whom, contrary to the reactionary St. Bernard,painting was the literature of the rnasses. William defends thepictorial work of the illuminators in the Scriptorium, reminding Jorgethat "Marginai images often provoke smiles, but to edifyingends" (p. 98). Later, with echoes of Dante's verses"sotto il velame delli versi strani" {Inferno IX, 63), Williamrefutes Jorge's rejection of Apuleius' and Lucian'sfables, asserting: "But this fable, beneath the veil of itsfictions, contains also a good moral, for it teaches how we pay for ourerrors" (p. 151).

Throughout The Rose we can enjoy making analogies betweenEco's descriptions and our database of familiar images. (30) Forinstance the Aedificium resembles the octagonal structure of Castel delMonte, the skulls and skeletons stacked along the walls of the ossariumare like those in the Crypt of the Capuchins in Palermo, and the libraryresembles a mixture of those at Harvard and the University of Torontomentioned in his essay "De Biblioteca" (1981). JJ Annaudpictured the labyrinthine stairways of the library, exploiting ananachronistic image of stairs by Escher that also recalls GianbattistaPiranesi's famous etchings "Carceri d'invenzione" of1745. Also, the sense of anxiety and mystery felt by Adso in seeing theabbey from a distance reminds us of Drogo as he sees for the first timethe fortress Bastiani in Dino Buzzati's The TartarSteppe--Zurlini's award-winning movie adaptation was released in1976. This is obvious in the opening scene of Annau's adaptation.And we smile at Adso's physical description of William that recallsDr. Watson's description of Sherlock Holmes in A Study of Scarlet,or when the querelle of ancients and modem is encapsulated in the imagelinked to the metaphoric aphorism "we are midgets on the shouldersof giants." Some critics have mentioned how the list of devils,monsters, and naked figures resembles Bosch's The Garden of EarthlyDelights. This is reasonable given that Adso calls the crowdedsculptures "enigmatic polyphony of sainted limbs and infernalsinews" (p. 57). I like especially the allusion to Bernini'sThe Ecstasy of St. Theresa when Adso feels a "wicked ecstasy"as he recalls his sexual experience (p. 280) together with BrotherMichael's death scene, while also citing Saint Hildegard and an"ecstatic rapture" (p. 271). (31)

Briefly put, like Adso, we learn that "omnis mundi creaturaquasi liber et pictura nobis est in speculimi" (p. 34). Yes, booksand images in The Rose speak also about our world. I believe thatEco's love of images combined with his enjoyment in making listsembodies his own aesthetic of excess that he studied from ancient timesto the present. This is evident in The Infinity of Lists (2009) where inthe introduction we read "the list is the beginning ofculture." In The Rose, lists are numerous and we read: "Thelist could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than alist, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis" (p. 91). In an interviewin Der Spiegel, Eco remarked: "we like lists because we don'twant to die" (Beyer and Gorris, 2009). It is certainly a clever wayof associating a love of making lists with Sheherazade's urgency tonarrate.

Like Foucault tracing epistemes, Eco revisits history not withnostalgia but by narrating ideas, texts, and events that reflecttoday's social, politicai, and cultural realities and therebytriggering bidirectional analogies. To the similarities between thefollowers of Dolcino and the red and black brigades of the 1970s we canadd various allusions to contemporary Italy present in severaldiscussions--e.g. in the speech of Aymaro, one of several apocalypticand millenarian characters, about abbeys, libraries, and Italy ingeneral (pp. 144-148), or in William's criticism of Italiansadoring saints and of the role of the church and priests (pp. 139-140).But it is Adso's remarks that come immediately to my mind, such as:"it is very difficult for a Northerner to form any clear idea ofthe religious and politicai vicissitudes of Italy", or "Italyis a land of conspiracies: they poison popes here" (p. 487). Abo,instead, faced with crimes, secrets, heretics, and a revolution, choosesto say "We live now in very dark times... Because of mankind'ssins the world is teetering on the brink of the abyss... Mundussenescit" (p. 48). In Day Two, William argues with Abo, deliveringa sharp criticism of abuses of power, and in Day Three he expands onthis topic, explaining to Adso how the poor, Dolcinians, outcasts, andminor orders are pawns in the hands of both Pope and Emperor. Hecontends that poverty, confusion, and despair lead to populism andrevolutions. A memorable line is: "All heresies are the banner of areality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find theleper" (p. 230). Adso concludes that "often inquisitors createheretics" (p. 65).

For Eco, intertextuality implies auctoritas, hypertexts, andanalogies--finding connections between books--which leads Adso toconclude: "from the books not hidden you can arrive at theconcealed ones" (p. 321). Finding links between past and present isat the core of Eco's novels because he firmly believed in historiamagistra vitae. In a way, he agrees with Benedetto Croce that allhistory is contemporary history. As a cultural historian, his cognitivehybrid novels map history, culture, legends, and fakes. Eco has oftenillustrated how there is nothing new under the sun, (32) and that weoften repeat history or move backwards like a crab. This is the mainmessage in A passo di gambero (2006; Turning Back the Clock), acollection of writings on the importance of memory and history in ordernot to repeat mistakes. The Socratic maxim 'know thyself for Ecobecomes know your history and your culture.

Our semiotician narrator in The Rose gives many examples of naturaisemiotics that he analyzes in Manzoni's Ipromessi sposi (seeManetti, 1989 and Eco, 1989d). An entire article could be dedicated toEco's treatment of his monks' faces, gestures, and mannerisms,which reminds us of Sergio Leone's close-ups in spaghetti westerns.The most suggestive verbal signs in the novel are naturally book,library, labyrinth, abbey, and apocalypse. For example, with book wethink of microcosm, images of our world, network of signs, andintertextuality; with library we think of auctoritas, encyclopedia,research, knowledge, Storage of lies and truths, and unlimited semiosis;and with labyrinth we associate intricate systems of signs, non-linearjourneys, structured chaos, making conjectures, and rhizomatic links asexplained by Eco in his "antiporfirio." For images of theabbey we envisage an allegorical closed world, centralized power,secrets, intellectual pride, and censored knowledge. These also functionas metaphors that elicit associations. Moreover, a net of relationshipsis established among these and other metaphors. Again, I am speaking ofmetaphor, frames, and figurative language as dynamic elements of acognitive discursive strategy that elicits chains of analogies dependingon the reader's competence, imagination, and willingness to be aninvestigator.

The notion that in The Name of the Rose Eco had put into practicehis studies on the Middle Ages and his own theoretical works was easy topursue. With Teresa de Lauretis (1981) and Walter Stephens, "Eco infabula" was a path I followed when in 1981 I wrote"Intertextuality and semiosis. Eco's educationsemiotique" (33) (Capozzi, 1983) and "Scriptor et Lector infabula ne Il nome della rosa" (Capozzi, 1982). I searched mainly inOpera aperta, A Theory of Semiotics, and The Role of the Reader forclues. Actually, the words and images that appeared on the originai redbook cover of the first edition suggested this avenue of research. Oneclear clue was the winking at readers and at Wittgenstein: "thosethings about which we cannot theorize, we must narrate." (34) Thepaper jacket with its image of a labyrinth--a rich paratext, inGenette's terms--was not used for subsequent editions andtranslations. However, the astute divertissem*nt "Naturally aManuscript," loaded with blatant self-disclosing metafictionalelements, attracted, as expected, or better as planted by Eco, a lot ofattention. I found of particular interest the admission: "I reallydon't know why I have decided to pluck up my courage and present,as if it were authentic, the manuscript of Adso of Melk. Let us say itis an act of love. Or, if you like, a way of ridding myself of numerous,persistent obsessions." In addition to paying a tribute to Manzoniand Borges, two of these obsessions had to be his love for narratingstories and his passion for the Middle Ages that he asserts inPostscript to the Name of the Rose: "The Middle Ages have remained,if not my profession, my hobby and a Constant temptation" (Eco,1984a: 18).

Eco was a master of irony and wordplay. In The Rose we can relishhis witty use of names such as Abo the Abbot, Paul of Rimini (thinkingof Paolo Fabbri), and Maximus of Bologna (for Massimo Ciavolella), orWilliam's ironic statements like those directed at Abo. But let megive two brief examples of Eco's wit taken from the same scenedealing with light humor and a pun. We recali Adso's reaction inseeing the peasant girl with no name hiding in the kitchen:

I sensed that she did not understand my Latin and instinctively Iaddressed her in my German vernacular, and this frightened her greatly.Then I smiled, considering that the language of gestures and of theface is more universal than that of words, and she was reassured." (35)

Later on, Adso, reminiscing his sexual initiation, in the Italianedition confesses: "ora dopo anni di distanza, mentre ancora piangoamaramente il mio fallo, non posso dimenticare", and we must keepin mind that a few lines later Eco uses peccato (a sin) insteadof'fallo. In Weaver's translation we read: "Now, afteryears and years, while I stili bitterly bemoan my error, I cannot forgethow that evening I had felt great pleasure" (p. 283). Consideringhow much time Adso spends discussing his love sickness (echoing pagesfrom Ciavolella's (1976) La malattia d'amore) (36) I thinkthat we agree that pleasure goes better with my fallo than with myerror, and I wonder if it is mostly Italian readers who are able toenjoy this pun and other wordplays.

The Name of the Rose is an example of an ingenious hybridization(yes, also a pastiche) in which many texts merge with, speak to, andenlighten one another. And so too merge many views on the Middle Ages.In Bakhtinian terms it is an intersection of textual "traces",a dialogue of texts, and a literary text generated through the endlessprocess of re-reading and re-writing. Our semiotico ludens succeeded inconstructing a stimulating possible world and an erudite divertissem*ntfull of puns, apocryphal manuscripts, parodies, irony, digressions, andinferential walks while also capturing the reader's attention witha plot full of suspense, foreshadowing, and other detective fictionstrategies like planting red herrings. It is a challenging literary andlinguistic collage fabricated in Eco's scriptorium, laden withparodies that shed light on the new derived from deja vu. In otherwords, from familiar frames we construct new meanings. Eco believed inthe Latin saying repetita juvant--repetition leads to a betterunderstanding. An erudite parody is found in the opening pages of thenovel where we first learn of William's detective skills and hisart of reading all sorts of signs. Eco admitted that William's featof peircean abductions in guessing from a set of traces the name andowner of Brunellus was a parody of conjectures present inVoltaire's Zadig. But let us look at a metaphoric trace. Whilelooking at the footprints in the snow around a pool of Venantius'blood, William comments: "Snow, dear Adso, is an admirableparchment on which men's bodies leave very legible writing. Butthis palimpsest is badly scraped, and perhaps we will read nothinginteresting on it" (p. 124).

The Name of the Rose, far from being badly scraped, reveals legiblepalimpsests that allow different levels of readers to recognize manyintertextual traces. While the majority of citations deal withauctoritas (37) --that is, knowledge--and many truths (somecontradictory) derived from Aristotle, the Bible, Tomas Aquinas, RogerBacon, Occam, and so on, there are also anachronistic authors such asFrancois Villon and Wittgenstein, and well-known cliches that enrich themontage of deja-vu and deja-lu. But what else among his anxieties ofinfluence encouraged Eco to exploit a strategy of cliches, archetypes,and common and intertextual frames? (38)

In 1975, Eco wrote "Casablanca o la nascita degli dei"(Eco, 1977: 138-143). A revised version, "Casablanca: Cult moviesand intertextual collage," appeared in the journal Substance (Eco,1985b). Eco examined how an intertextual collage of cliches was usedconstructively, concluding: "two cliches make us laugh, but ahundred cliches move us because we sense dimly that the cliches aretalking among themselves and celebrating a reunion" (Eco, 1985:11). This is also what books, authors, and parodies do in The Rose. Infact, once readers enter into the library, and more deeply into thedetective story, they realize that The Rose, as announced on theoriginai paper jacket, is a detective story of citations, a mosaic ofbooks, a book about books. Adso summarizes best the relationships ofbooks in a library:

not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke amongthemselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all themore disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-oldmurmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another,a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind,a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death ofthose who had produced them or had been their conveyors. (p. 321)

Regardless of the changes we notice in Annaud's adaptation ofThe Name of the Rose after reading the article on Casablanca, one gets afeeling that Eco is also talking about the filmic transposition of hisnovel: "Nevertheless, it is a great example of cinematic discourse,a palimpsest for the future students of twentieth-century religiosity, aparamount laboratory for semiotic research in textual strategies.Moreover, it has become a cult movie" (Eco, 198-5b: 3). Eco speaksof Casablanca exactly as The Rose speaks to us:

a living example of living textuality. In the face of this, theaddressee must suspect that it is not true that works are created bytheir authors. Works are created by works, texts are created by texts,and all together they speak to and with one another independently ofthe intentions of their authors. A cult movie is the proof that, asliterature comes from literature, cinema also comes from cinema. (Eco,1985b: 4) (39)

In the article, we find another statement that sheds light on TheRose and on the aesthetics of excess: "Casablanca is a cult movieprecisely because all the archetypes are there [...] Casablanca hassucceeded in becoming a cult movie because it is not one movie. It is'the movies'" (Eco, 1985b: 11). De Lauretis summarizedEco's international bestseller, stating that The Rose is "anarrative summa--the novel most novelistic, the mystery most insoluble,the bildungsroman most picaresque, the text most intertextual, themanuscript found, not just in a bottle but in a Chinese box" (DeLauretis, 1985: 15). Considering all the spinoffs that have followed, wecan add: The Name of the Rose is a cult novel. (4)

Eco's clever references to Snoopy's parodie beginning"it was a dark and stormy night," Dante's verse "ecaddi come corpo morto cade" (p. 284), or any other familiarquotation that may border on extreme banality such as "Elementary,my dear Watson," "lupus in fabula," and "It is Greekto me" (p. 192) are part of a calculated strategy that transcendskitsch and approaches the sublime, just as Eco sees the cliches inCasablanca: "Just as extreme pain meets sensual pleasure, andextreme perversion borders on mystical energy, so does extreme banalityallow us to catch a glimpse of the sublime" (Eco, 1985b: 11). Ofcourse, the sublime and the playful dialogic relationships of frames,archetypes, and cliches in The Rose are appreciated mostly by readerswith a competence in texts, authors, and familiar scripts.

Fragments of Eco's autobiography (41) are dispersed ininterviews and in many pages of his novels by means of recurring motifsand intratextual references to his works, as in the preface"Naturally a Manuscript" where in the Italian originai he alsocites Apocalittici e integrati (1964). Fragments of Eco's alter egoare present in William and Adso. For example, at the end of the novelAdso, a novice monk and a novice narrator, describes how for his"faithful chronicle" (p. 495) he has collected scraps of booksand images that have remained impressed in his mind. He narrates what hesaw, heard, and learned, adding very little of his own. It isessentially a reflection of Eco, a novice narrator, and of his art ofbricolage and montage in The Rose. On the originai paper jacket, we findthis other ironie wink: "the author, perhaps mendaciously, assertsthat not one word is his own." I also think that Adso describesEco's formidable memory and vast erudition when he says:"Often from a word or a surviving image I could recognize what thework had been" (p. 546).

Eco had a most impressive memory, an overwhelming interdisciplinaryerudition, the skills of an imaginative architect of possible worlds,great humor, and a profound cultural conscience. Some critics, followingBrian McHale and Linda Hutcheon, like to consider The Name of the Roseas a postmodern historiographic metafiction. I have often definedEco's educating and entertaining narratives as cognitive hybridencyclopedic novels, but I should have added that they are dynamicepistemological metaphors.

Notes

(1.) A shorter version of this article was read at UCLA in theDepartment of Medieval Studies and Renaissance, on January 27, 2017.

(2.) I use the Warner Books edition of 1983 throughout my article,hereafter referred to as The Rose.

(3.) See in Opera aperta (Eco, 1962) the section "L'operacome metafora epistemologica." In The Open Work (Eco, 1989a) see"Informai Art as an Epistemological Metaphor," pp. 87-93.

(4.) See Eco (1959). Revised in 1987 as Arte e bellezzanell'estetica medievale.

(5.) "a work cannot but refer to the cultural reality itrepresents--refer to it in the most complete and organic waypossible" (Eco, 1989a: 155).

(6.) We recali that Eco ends his third novel, The Island of the DayBefore, stating: "without ever succeeding in eluding the Anxiety ofInfluence" (Eco, 1994a: 512).

(7.) "The Literature of Exhaustion" and "TheLiterature of Replenishment" are available in The Friday Book:Essays and Other Non-Fiction (Barth, 1984). Together with Part One ofWilliam Gass' (1970) Fiction and the Figures of Life, I suggestCristopher Nash's (1987) excellent study World-Games: The TraditionofAnti-Realist Revolt which examines several novelists including Borges,Calvino, and John Barth. Eco's The Rose is not treated, but theargumentations on realism, referentiality, anti-realism, wordplays, andmetaphysical, historical, and epistemological systems apply very well toEco's strategies in fabulating cultural history and contemporarysocio-political realities.

(8.) Calvino: "divertire e una cosa seria"; from aninterview with Capecchi (1986) in La Nazione. Eco in The Rose arguesthat laughter, comedy, and irony can be used as cognitive tools.

(9.) In a recent Bustina, "Il piacere dell'indugio"(Eco, 2014), he reiterates: "Nell'epoca della velocita e deicorsi di quick reading vale la pena invece di riscoprire la bellezzadella lettura lenta."

(10.) Architecture in The Rose receives plenty of attention, as inWilliam's description: "For architecture, among all the arts,is the one that most boldly tries to reproduce in its rhythm the orderof the universe, which the ancients called 'kosmos,' that isto say ornate, since it is like a great animai on whom there shine theperfection and the proportion of all its members, weight andmeasure" (p. 37). See also Eco's (1968) examination ofsemiotics and architecture in La struttura assente.

(11.) Sommavilla (1981: 502-506). A long article would be needed toexamine the negative reviews of Eco's novels in the Jesuit Romanpapers La Civilta Cattolica and L'Osservatore Romano. It is wellknown that since 1955 Eco was no longer a practicing Catholic. In hisnovels, especially in The Prague Cemetery, he was very criticai ofJesuits.

(12.) Angelus's real name was Johann Scheffler. Thetranslation of his entire stanza from "God is not grasped" is:"God is an utter Nothingness, Beyond the touch of Time and Place:The more thou graspest after Him, The more he fleeth thy embrace".

(13.) In Apocalittici e integrati, Eco's rejectsNiezsche's nihilism; see "I nichilisti fiammeggianti"(Eco, 1964: 361-364). Eco has also argued against Nietzche's"On Truth and Lies in an Extra Moral Sense" on his views ofmetaphors and history.

(14.) After hearing many tales, Adso comments "as it becamemingled with the things I already knew from my own experience, thesedistinctions did not emerge clearly: everything looked the same aseverything else" (p. 216).

(15.) And yet to Adso he had said: "I am better. Even betterthan Bernard Gui, God forgive me. Because Bernard is interested, not indiscovering the guilty, but in burning the accused. And I, on thecontrary, find the most joyful delight in unraveling a nice, complicatedknot. And it must also be because, at a time when as philosopher, Idoubt the world has an order, I am consoled to discover, if not anorder, at least a series of connections" (p. 438).

(16.) At this point he cites Wittgenstein: "The order that ourmind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attainsomething. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because youdiscover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless" (p. 541).

(17.) See Eco's definition and discussion of a creative writerin Confessions of a Young Novelist (Eco, 2011:2-32).

(18.) "On Style," in Eco (2002: 183).

(19.) See Eco's "Some remarks on New Realism" (Eco,2015: 387-395). Eco appears to support Emanuele Severino's (2011)theory.

(20.) Eco remembers Calvino in the article "Per Calvino"in my Tra Eco e Calvino. Relazioni rizomatiche, where he explains thatCalvino's novel for him was a "manifesto politico emorale" (a moral and politicai manifesto) (Capozzi, 2013: 36-40).

(21.) I also suggest Eco's "Intertextual Irony and Levelsof Reading" in On Literature (Eco, 2002: 212-235). Numerous Bustineare available in the volumes La Bustina (2000) and Pape Satan Aleppe.Cronache di una societa liquida (2016).

(22.) "Bisogna abituarsi sin da piccolo a confondersi le idee,per avere le idee chiare," in "Sentire due campane" inDalla periferia deli impero (Eco, 1977: 288).

(23.) "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall makeyou free" (John, 8:32, King James).

(24.) See Eco (Sulla Letteratura: 213-226; 2002: 201-211).

(25.) "Form as Social Commitment" and "Form andInterpretation in Luigi Pareyson's Aesthetics" are found inthe The Open Work (Eco, 1989a).

(26.) Article in two parts in Golem L'indispensabile (1 July2002). A shorter version appears in the collection On Literature (Eco,2002).