On the cover of Eco's novel Il nome della rosa there is the outline of the labyrinth which one appeared on the floor of the Reims cathedral, and which was destroyed during the eighteenth century because children made a playful use of the maze and disturbed the sacred functions "for evidently perverse ends." Hence, from its very appearance, Eco's novel is posited under two signs: the labyrinth as an artistic structure, and play as transgression. Both are at the core of the book and explain its powerful appeal.
Thematically, the labyrinth is the form of the library of an abbey in northern Italy in the year of the Lord 1327, where seven consecutive murders take place in a mysterious connection with the quest for a lost (and forbidden) volume, Aristotle's second book of poetics, dealing with laughter and comedy. Almost until the end, a blind and fearsome Benedictine friar, Jorges da Burgos, defies the reasoned efforts of a Sherlock-Holmesian Dominican friar, Guglielmo da Baskerville, to trace the murders to the lost volume in the labyrinthine library. The events are faithfully recorded by another friar, the old Adso da Melck, who witnessed them as a young novice…. But in the process the narrator conveys an incredible mass of medievalia…. (p. 449)
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