The novel is structured around the liturgical hours (e.g. Matins, Vespers, Compline) of the seven days that William and Adso spend at the monastery in Northern Italy in 1327. But the entire work, described by the subtitle "Naturally, a Manuscript," is introduced as a copy of an authentic work which has been lost. Eco presents himself not as the traditional novelist, but as yet another amanuensis who transcribes a nineteenth-century reproduction of the original work "as if it were authentic, the manuscript of Adso of Melk."

Again, Eco shows that his work not only engenders but also grows out of an individual interpretation.

In Postscript to "The Name of the Rose" Eco explains his choice of genres: "since I wanted you [the reader] to feel as pleasurable the one thing that frightens us — namely, the metaphysical shudder — I had only to choose (from among the model plots) the...