Ссылка: Папушина А. А. Внутреннее Средневековье Умберто Эко [Электронный ресурс] // Vox medii aevi. 2017. Vol. 1(1). С. 107–119. URL: https://voxmediiaevi.com/vol-1-papushina ‎

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Anastasia Papushina

Post-Graduate Student, Central European University (Budapest, Hungary)

Umberto Eco’s Inner Middle Ages

Italian philosopher and semiologist Umberto Eco is internationally known for his fascinatingly complex historian novels where the scene is laid in the Middle Ages. Eco loves this era since his youth and knows it fully as historian and philosopher. However, he often talks about the Middle Ages by the means of literature or journalism rather than academic writings. What is his position towards medieval studies? In the proposed article a brief overview of Eco’s perception of the Middle Ages is given. According to our hypothesis scholasticism is the key to understanding his novels, strongly influenced by James Joyce, and his academic work as a semiologist. This is philosophy, trying to unveil the secrets of the chaotic world around and to find its true meaning, that transforms Eco’s Middle Ages from the field of study to the author’s «mental everyday».

Key words: Umberto Eco; scholasticism; neo-medievalism; writing history; chaos.

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