The Bible, the Conan Doyle stories, the works of Aristotle, medieval literature of every sort — herbals, theological studies, romances — and Eco's own writings on semiotics are the most important sources and inspirations for The Name of The Rose. But it would be easier to identify the works that have not in some way contributed to the characters, themes, and plots of The Name of the Rose than those that have.

Eco's erudition is so broad, his writing so informed that authors as diverse as James Joyce and Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges and John Barth, Thomas a Kempis and Thomas Aquinas inform the novel.

In Eco's own terms The Name of The Rose is a postmodern novel that insists on the primacy of plot. As he himself argues: "The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be...