Intertextuality In Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose

Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, is made of bit and pieces of other books and other texts. Intertextuality is the first thing to be noted when reading the book. Throughout the novel the author alludes to a myriad of authors and other stories. “The Rose is an archi-text, archi-novel, throughout which many texts and many novels are intentionally disseminated (Capozzi 1989, p.418). In this light, we will first consider the importance of laughter in the novel and secondly we will look more closely at intertextuality as an important feature of the structure of the novel.

Since the very beginning of the novel, when the first murder occurred, William of Baskerville mentioned the term “palimpsests”:

Snow, dear Adso, is an admirable parchment on which men 's bodies leave very legible writing. But this palimpsest is badly scraped, and perhaps we will read nothing interesting on it (Eco1980, p.114).

Furthermore, the title itself speaks much about the multiplicity of possible interpretations of the novel. The title could have been “The name of the Father” since it speaks of Christianity but “The name of the Rose” opens up to multiple of interpretations. The rose can be interpreted as

Just like Boges, he alludes to other texts and stories in his novel. His novel is a story about other stories. For instance, the story of “Death and the compass” is found in the text. Both William of Baskerville and Erik Lonnrot are searching for a book on the shelves of vast and grand library. William is looking for Aristotle’s Poetics and the man in “Death and the Compass” is looking for a book which speaks of other books. The image of the library as labyrinth is seen in Borges’ story and reoccurs in Eco’s story. Furthermore, it is hard not to think of Sherlock Holmes while reading the novel as detective one. Both Sherlock and William are detectives that use logical reasoning to solve complicated cases. William