ABSTRACT
The argument of this chapter is based on one certainty and one large gamble. The certainty is that Eco’s work, seen retrospectively and in its current state, is mobile, self-referential and ‘in progress’. The gamble is that the overwhelming, but ambiguous, attention paid in the English-speaking world to the novels may be giving way to something else, and something better, if certain straws in the wind are any more than just wind and straw. The focus on the novels has been ambiguous because there is confusion between their theoretical and narrative dimensions and uncertainty as to the relative value to be assigned to these. At the heart of the chapter is a plea to pay much greater attention to the historical context of Eco’s thought, starting from a crucial moment in its formation: 1968.
