«The Silent Speech of the Carved Stone»: the Portal of Moissac in «The Name of the Rose»

Abstract

The article examines the role of the abbey portal in The Name of the Rose, modeled after that of Saint-Pierre in Moissac, as a privileged example of intersection between the medieval experience of art and literary theory. In the novel, Adso of Melk’s description takes the form of an ékphrasis that not only reproduces the artistic object but transforms it into an interpretive key to the whole narrative. The portal is not a mere backdrop but a semantic and narrative hinge guiding the reading in an apocalyptic direction. The analysis highlights, on one hand, the perceptual and multisensory dimension of beholding the monument, and on the other, the role of ékphrasis as a space of interpretive cooperation between author and reader. Finally, the literary reconstruction of the portal proves to be permeable to the protagonist’s cultural and spiritual projections and shaped by the cinematic ‘scopic regime’ informing Eco’s writing. The «carved stone» thus becomes a hermeneutic threshold, an exemplum of critical reception of the Middle Ages and a reflection on the relationship between image and word.