Abstract

What contribution has Umberto Eco’s historical fiction made to knowledge of the history of medieval philosophy? His first and most famous novel, The Name of the Rose, had the merit of drawing the attention of the common reader to mediaeval thought, which is usually neglected and still not widely known. However, this portrayal was characterized by a negative and deforming image of medieval monasticism and its philosophical conceptions. By contrast the scholastic Middle Ages were looked upon by Eco with very modern —even “postmodern”— eyes, so that very little was left of the Middle Ages themselves.