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.

 For More Information – visit

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?ltrec=t&isbn=9788188132539&bi=

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.

 For More Information – visit

http://centurypublications.co.in/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=3507

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’sPendulum, 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.

 

For More Information – visit

http://centurypublications.co.in/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=3507

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.

 

For More Information – visit

http://centurypublications.co.in/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=3507

What is True Knowledge? – History, Science or Art.

 

Guy Raffa in his article “Eco’s Scientific Imagination” claims that no author in the recent years has worked on redrawing of disciplinary boundaries as Eco has done. The argument originates from Umberto Eco remark, “there is something artistic in a scientific discovery and there is something scientific in that which the naïve call brilliant intuitions of the artist.’ What they share is the felicity of Abduction”[1]. Raffa claims that the method of inquisition a critical role in the fiction, The Name of the Rose; Foucault’s Pendulum; and The Island of the Day Before – “science serves as a focal point for all of Eco’s fiction, just as his theoretical works take account of the state of scientific work on a number of topics.”[2]

Raffa argues that the blending of science discovery and artistic creation are dexterously woven in Eco’s novels. The element of creation and science empirical approach to find unique pattern that raises a critical question on the philosophy.

Umberto Eco does not imitate inductive and deductive approach to give a structure of plot to his text rather chooses a middle of two - Creative abduction “the tentative and hazardous tracing of a system of signification rules which will allow the sign to acquire its meaning”[3]

According to Charles S. Peirce, in relation to (but distinct from) deductive and inductive reasoning, abduction is an inferential process followed when some strange event cannot be explained satisfactorily by a ready-made rule (deduction) or by experience in the form of sufficient empirical evidence (induction).

All disciplines represent a way to the production of knowledge which has been a blind spot or inaccessible to man. The inaccessibility of knowledge presses a unique question on the nature of the true knowledge which has either been a fantasy or imaginative material that require further exploration. From the beginning of the civilization, philosophers have been engaged in finding the true nature of knowledge or rather the crux that leads to the production of knowledge. Michel Foucault has tried to do the same in his book – The Archeology of Knowledge – explaining the basics how the scientific knowledge is produced. If scientific knowledge enables the accessibility of truth, then what is the relevance of historical knowlehistorical knowledgedge.

According to the book - Umberto Eco: Rethinking History and Fiction, “History is a narrative structure that gives us the glimpse of the past and enables to know the truth. It is a narrative of past events supplemented with facts. The facts are available to historians in documents, inscriptions, monuments and achieves. Thus, history produces the knowledge of past. It is an instrument to access truth. However, postmodernism prioritises indeterminacy, multiplicity of meaning, narrative structure and interpretation. This leads us to theorize the production of knowledge, its articulation, presentation and interpretation very differently.”[4]

For more information -

http://centurypublications.co.in/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=3507

 

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[1]  Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, p. 159

[2] Peter Bondanella, New Essays on Umberto Eco,  Cambridge University Press, 2009 p 56.

[3] Eco,Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, p. 40.

[4] Chetan, Umberto Eco: Rethinking History and Fiction, Century Publication, 2014, p - 23

Who Copies Who? – Umberto Eco vs. Dan Brown

The introduction of the summer of 2003 was the summer of  The Da Vinci Code. It was the summer of  The Da Vinci Code but for kids, it was the summer of  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  The Da Vinci Code mystery is an attempt to figure out what Robert Langdon is involved in. According to Janet Maslin of The New York Times, “it would be a bloc006Bbuster when it first appeared in the spring: “That word is wow, the author is Dan Brown (a name you will want to remember). In this gleefully erudite suspense novel, Mr. Brown takes the format he has been developing through three earlier novels and fine-tunes it to blockbuster perfection. Not since the advent of Harry Potter has an author so flagrantly delighted in leading readers on a breathless chase and coaxing them through hoops.”[1]

According to Marcel Danesi, a University of Toronto semiotics professor (the study of signs and symbols), thinks the convergence of a number of themes that year created the heat.[2]

The themes could be interpreted in the backdrop of rising feminism and the cry for their identity. There was also a growing interest in conspiracies, occultism and crime shows at the time, he notes, all of which the book taps into.

Although Dan Brown claims to have written the book uninfluenced, the fact is indigestible since he took a genre that was sometimes ponderous in the writing to Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.

In an interview given to Paris Review –

INTERVIEWER - Have you read The Da Vinci Code?

ECO - Yes, I am guilty of that too.

INTERVIEWER - That novel seems like a bizarre little offshoot of Foucault’s Pendulum.

ECO - The author, Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault’s Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters’ fascinations—the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.[3]

Umberto Eco –Rethinking History and Fiction also explores the issue in the context of Postmodernism where there is no originality, only re-representation of old knowledge.

“Foucault’s Pendulum is a kind of re-working of medieval culture in contemporary times with the present understanding of the past. Thus, Eco is a torch bearer for the budding historical fiction writers like Dan Brown who hits the market with the sensational fiction on the medieval ages. Dan Brown catches the eyes of world audience with his most famous work – The Da Vinci Code – which also discusses the Rosicrucian and the Templars.”[4]

For more information - http://centurypublications.co.in/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=3507

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[1] Anatomy of the blockbuster – the Da Vinci Code, The star. com.<< http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/07/11/anatomy_of_a_blockbuster_the_da_vinci_code.html>>  

[2] Ibid. 2

[3] The Art of Fiction – The Paris Review Interviewed by Lila Azam Zanganeh

[4] Chetan, Umberto Eco: Rethinking History and Fiction, Century Publication, New Delhi 2014, p 77.