ABSTRACT
Umberto Eco's best-selling first novel, Il nome della rosa, is a prime model of the metanarrative strand of anti-illusionist historical narration. The principles of Eco's semiotics clearly converge with the principles of anti-illusionist philosophies of history. Eco's adoption of the master narrative of the Bible and the apocalypse as thematic presences and structural principles in Il nome della rosa is ironical. The affirmation of the centreless rhizomaic nature of the world is reflected in the celebration of carnival which permeates the novel, offering a pluralized alternative to the one-dimensional, authoritative singularity of the established order and Voice of Authority. The scope of the carnivalesque discourse in Il nome della rosa is greater than in Sebastiano Vassalli's La chimera, for it extends beyond the debates on heresy into the debates on laughter and onto the level of characterization.
