Like The Name of The Rose, Foucault's Pendulum provides a formidable display of Eco's erudition couched in the terms of a mystery thriller. Perhaps less thrilling than its predecessor, Fou-cault's Pendulum also offers whole chapters of fairly straightforward history on subjects as diverse as the Jesuits, calendar reform, numerology, and cartography. Medieval history is perhaps no less important in Foucault's Pendulum than it was in The Name of The Rose.

Eco's own works on literature, especially his 1989 study The Open Work, are probably the best guides to understanding the logic of Foucault's Pendulum. Foucault's Pendulum is in many ways the quintessential "open work."