ABSTRACT
When a theorist writes a novel, problematic issues are raised in the never stable relationship between text and reader, as the theories of the author are in a sense unavoidably imposed on the reader. We may actively rebel against the overlordship of the author at any time as, for example, so many receptors have to the strident narrative voices of John Fowles or Saul Bellow. But, in our acquiescence to the author's narrativity - that is, in the fact that we read the novel ardently enough to carry on with it - we succumb to being dominated at least temporarily by the impact of the
theory in question. By 1980, at the age of 47, Umberto Eco had established an international scholarly reputation for his work in semiotics - the theory of signs and signifiers - with such books as Opera Aperta and The Role of the Reader. In that year the Italian edition of Eco's now famous novel, The Name of the Rose (II Nome della Rosa) appeared under the imprint of Bompiani, the publishers of his scholarly work. The novel was qUickly translated into many languages to wide and almost universal acclaim, with the English edition coming along rather belatedly in 1983, elegantly translated by the American expatriot, William Weaver. Its reception in the English-speaking world is a publishing phenomenon. Popular in Britain, the novel exploded on the American market, with something like 1,700,000 copies sold in the first two years of its life.
