In the following essay, Corry shows the influence of Borges's fictions on Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose.

In the following essay, Garrett examines the meaning of the library as a literary topos in The Name of the Rose from the perspective of professional librarians, discussing several aspects pertinent to real-life libraries and their administrators.

In the following essay, Parker examines the postmodernist tendencies of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose in light of Eco's own literary criticism.

Using both intelligence and flexibility, [Mr. Eco] has become the spokesman of a philosophical trend that could be labeled as a kind of "neo-enlightenment." His approach entails methodological doubting versus dogmatism, and the use of parody and irony against sectarian thought; his idea of culture is that it is mainly a channel of interdisciplinary exchange rather than a provider of certainties or a chapel for hermetic and initiatory rites. But that description is already a beginning of an int...

The Name of the Rose [is] a novel of murder, politics and ideas that has rightly become an acclaimed European best seller. Late in 1327 a Franciscan, William of Baskerville, accompanied by the novice Adso of Melk, journeys to an unnamed Benedictine monastery to arrange a meeting of detente between representatives of Pope John and Emperor Louis. Just as master and disciple arrive at the abbey, a young monk commits suicide under suspicious circumstances. The worldly abbot asks the Sherlock Holmes-like Francis...

There is something of the sleuth in any scholar; small wonder, therefore, that one as flamboyantly articulate as Umberto Eco should have successfully turned his talents to the writing of a detective story, Il nome della rosa. But this, Eco's first novel, is no mere detective story; rather, its framework serves as a vehicle for nothing less than a summa of all the author knows about the Middle Ages—and all he wishes us to know…. Eco's rare gift for epitome has a chance to shine fo...

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 an...

In The Name of the Rose, [Eco's] first work of fiction, he has bestowed his own talents lavishly on his created sleuth. William knows that "the universe is talkative … and it speaks not only of the ultimate things (which it does always in an obscure fashion) but also of closer things, and then it speaks quite clearly." His acumen in deciphering the secret signs of the world would be sufficient delight, but Eco's complex themes include sparkling disquisitions on the arts of...