«Ovviamente», il Medioevo? Note per una lettura metastorica de «Il nome della rosa» di Umberto Eco

Abstract

The essay aims to reflect on the choice of the Middle Ages by Umberto Eco for the setting of his first novel Il nome della rosa (1980). While in the Postille to the novel published by the author in 1983 this choice is described as obvious, it is instead worth focusing on it in order to place it in its historical and cultural context – a wide-ranging medievalist revival in the 1970s – and thus understand its significance as a node in a wider network. Considering specifically what kind of Middle Ages is represented in the text, and relating it to the historical period during which Eco claims to have conceived the book, we see how what seems to interest him is the story of the eternal return of the dynamics of power, the definition of archetypes of power that could constitute a passepartout for the interpretation of reality: historical depth seems here to yield in a certain way to a 'meta-historical' hypothesis aimed at formulating a model of the clash between power and counter-power in the midst of which those who seek to lucidly investigate its mechanisms are bound to succumb.