UMBERTO ECO: RETHINKING HISTORY AND FICTION

ABSTRACT

History give an access to unknown past through narrative structure scaffolding on facts and manuscripts drawn from achieves. These manuscripts and detailed accounts corroborate with ruined archeological sites with inscriptions and arts. Thus, history represents rational and objective truth that answers to all the queries of people about the past.  What happens when a fiction writer chooses stories and characters from history? If a fictional story is based on a historical incident and characters, what is the difference between fiction and history? Does the reader not find himself cheated? What stand does the reader take with respect to fiction and history? These questions inform about the substitutive nature of history and fiction that have infiltrated into each other territories. Does it really obliterate the difference?   The questions become easier to answer if we define history and fiction in their respective territories. In fact, neither history is fictitious nor fiction is history; they do not pose a challenge to each other only inform about narrative structure and their representation through language.

The debate on the substitutive nature of history and fiction becomes important when I read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is drawn from a manuscript, narrating a story of monastery from the fourteenth century. The manuscript is based on a real incident and Eco employs its content to write the book incorporating real characters and organizations. He sheds light on the problems people faced owing to their religious positions, and how science proved detrimental to religion.  The book exhibits the significance of rational thinking and theory of deduction (primarily used by Sherlock Holmes) to access knowledge. The study has discovered that history is a source of knowledge about the past which uses scientific methods as a detective employs to solve a mystery.  The study also takes into account the theories of history and fiction with a specific reference to borrowing of content and characters from other sources without acknowledgment. Foucault’s Pendulum is a story of three editors who develop a PLAN from second rate manuscripts on historical incidents. A secret organization considers the fictitious PLAN to be real and kills the three editors. They borrow their content on the Templars and other secret organizations from the manuscripts. The study shows that history emerges through multiple texts. Each text has its own significance and essence; each text oozes from the other. The production of text questions the authenticity from which it has evolved. In Foucault’s Pendulum, Eco sets a conversation between past and present then move to the borrowing from the past and its articulation in new framework.

Lastly, the study tries to find answers to important questions – how history resurrects in the present? How past is always present?  What are the mediums of past re-emergence in the present?  These questions are significant in view of the fact that history is written in the present. It lacks the pastness of past rather a present of the past. We get the answers to all these questions in Umberto Eco’s essay – “Towards a New Middle Ages” that explains the past never dies; it revisits the present though in different form. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Umberto Eco to many of us is a known name who gives a new dimension to Postmodern fiction through The Name of the Rose that has received huge appreciation across the world. For me, Umberto Eco was an unidentified personality overshadow by Dan Brown who astonished the popular fiction readers with The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. Being deeply impressed by Brown’s writing, I had made up my mind that I would critically study his work. The kind of complex curiosity Brown created through the Preface of The Da Vinci Code by claiming that some organizations and secret bodies exist even now.

Umberto Eco seemingly is one of the first torch bearers that sparked the discourse on the relationship between history and fiction. Eco informs in the Preface of The Name of the Rose that the roots of the story exist in a manuscript about a real incident occurred in the fourteenth century. The incident was a result of much debated issue then – “Whether the Church should give away its wealth?” The Franciscans debated on the Poverty of Christ and definition of heretics whereas the Dominicans opposed them vehemently. Umberto Eco has not articulated these issues rather tried to represent them through his works. I was of course guided by my own current interests but the starting point of these reflections on history and fiction to excavate deeply was usually a feeling of impatience. Precisely,

 I was greatly resented that the two distinctive disciplines infiltrate into each other territories without cognizance to the damage cause to the prestige. Right from the beginning, I was engaged to find the common ground between history and fiction and confident that the two only produce knowledge or provide information. Language provides the apparatus on which the scaffolding of knowledge erected. The book is a philosophical interpretation of Eco’s fiction and does not bound the reader with its assertions.

Contents

 

I)                        Chapter 1– History and Fiction
II)                     Chapter 2 – The Name of the Rose: A Study of History and Fiction
III)            Chapter 3 – The Name of the Rose: Knowledge, Detection, Threats, Institutionalization and Interpretation
IV)           Chapter 4 - Foucault’s Pendulum: The Creation of Multiple Histories
V)                   Chapter 5 - “Towards of New Middle Ages”: Resurrection of Past in Present
VI)           Conclusion – Eco’ Fictional History and Sensational Fiction
Bibliography

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 The author works in the capacity of an Assistant Professor (Adhoc) at Bharati College University of Delhi, India. His research interest areas are – Postmodernism, History and Fiction, Cultural Studies, and Crime and Detection.

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