This book blew me away. It did what every great book does. First, it engages you on the level of storytelling. It is, at its most basic level, a murder mystery. But it's also historical fiction. Eco fleshes out the historical era by showing the political significance of the monastery as it existed at the intersection of religious and secular authority. But Eco also paints a picture of the era's...
more This book blew me away. It did what every great book does. First, it engages you on the level of storytelling. It is, at its most basic level, a murder mystery. But it's also historical fiction. Eco fleshes out the historical era by showing the political significance of the monastery as it existed at the intersection of religious and secular authority. But Eco also paints a picture of the era's internal landscape by describing how the narrator filtered the perceived world through Medieval logic. Eco also uses his story to convey a nature of meaning. By showing the inability to impose a text-like narrative on reality to find meaning, Eco foreshadows the nature of thought in the Modern world. A great book.
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