Umberto Eco’s The Name of The Rose as Histographic Metafiction (Pastiche, Parody and Intertextuality of History)

Abstract

The late medieval world, teetering on the edge of discoveries and ideas that will hurl it into one more recognizably ours, its thought, its life-style, its intense political and ecclesiastical intrigues…its steamy and seductive currents of heresy of thought…all these are evoked with a force and wit that is breathtaking - Financial Times.The Name of The Rose (1980) is the first and most acclaimed work of Umberto Eco, Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. It is a long and multifaceted novel that challenges the reader to identify the main plot which is interwoven masterly with several other captivating parallel and serious narratives.The name of The Rose has metafictional elements and histographic metafictional elements. Histographic metafiction creates a fictive reality in the historical context and questions the veracity of historical discourse using the characters in the histographic fictive reality. The focus of the paper is to show how techniques such as pastiche, parody and intertextuality have been employed by Umberto Eco in creating the histographic metafiction The Name of The Rose.