Eco's Chaosmos: From the Middle Ages to Postmodernity by Cristina Farronato (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.2, 2005 529 The book is persuasive, and it also presents instances of exegetical precision and exhaustiveness. However, the argument could be better pieced together and interwoven more tightly.The book plunges too abruptly into the analysis of / giovani del Po, without providing even the briefest introduction of Calvino's previous production in the light of later developments. The title is too timid, and shifts expectations to such an extent that it is hard to reconcile it with the actual content, which is none the less compelling and has a current, pressing interest. It sounds as if Bolongaro is using Calvino's position to address his contemporary audience. Calvino's lesson should be rescued because, then as now, the hegemonic apparatuses still stand unchallenged, refusing to answer Cosimo's urgent plea for rationality and accountability: 'Cosimo is not prepared to accept an authority structure based on status alone [. . .] Cosimo is in fact attempting to provoke the authority figure into giving reasons, and thus becoming accountable, forhis exercise of power' (p. 89). St John's College, Cambridge Pierpaolo Antonello Eco's Chaosmos: From the Middle Ages to Postmodernity. By Cristina Farronato. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2003. xiv + 246 pp. ?32 (pbk ?18). ISBN 0-8020-8789-2 (pbk 0-8020-8586-5). For many years, the majority of literary critics in the English-speaking world con? sidered Umberto Eco's theoretical writings primarily as a source of sophisticated clues for the interpretation of his novels. This trend now seems to have changed: during the late 1990s Peter Bondanella (Umberto Eco and the Open Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)) and Michael Caesar (Umberto Eco: Philosophy, Semiotics and the Work ofFiction (Cambridge: Polity, 1999)) emphasized the width of Eco's intellectual accomplishments by referringto specialist debates in semiotics and the philosophy of language as well as to literary studies. More recently, a collection of essays edited by Charlotte Ross and Rochelle Sibley (Illuminating Eco (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)) also stressed the importance of Eco's achievements as a theorist. Cristina Farronato's book, which presents itself as a study of 'the philosophical back? ground at the basis of Umberto Eco's critical writings and novels' (p. x), takes a similar stance, but distinguishes itself from its predecessors in two important respects. While Bondanella's and Caesar's books follow a largely chronological order, Farronato's main concern is not with Eco's 'intellectual biography' (p. 4) but with his interest in medieval philosophy and culture. Each ofthe book's nine chapters addresses this topic in a differentcontext: Eco's research in semiotics, his contributions to reader-response criticism, his predilection forintertextualpastiches and forthe detective novel, and his speculations on a theory of laughter are in turn analysed with a particular attention to his medieval models. Eco's early, ironic self-depiction as 'a medievalist in hibernation ' (p. 8) is treated by Farronato as the explanatory key to his wide-ranging success. Unlike Bondanella and Caesar, Farronato hence perceives an underlying, essential continuity in Eco's works: from the Middle Ages to postmodernity, Eco's research is indebted, according to Farronato, to scholastic philosophy, 'a method that, with its rigour and clarity, has deeply influenced him since his earliest years' (p. 8) and which has opened his eyes to the fact that 'medieval philosophy is somehow closer to contemporary thought than is so-called modern philosophy' (p. 192). Farronato's concern with medieval philosophy?the supposed common denominator of all of Eco's theoretical and literary writings?inspires some of the book's most interesting and compelling pages. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss Eco's early studies on Thomas Aquinas and Joyce and their influence on his later work in semiotics. Chapter 7 explores the epistemological implications of Eco's theory of abduction and 52? Reviews relates them to his interest in the detective novel. Finally, Chapter 8 contains a detailed reading of Baudolino, in which the novel's unexpected shift towards the fantastic is assessed in the light of Eco's recent essays on serendipity and scientific verification. Combining great precision with a detailed knowledge of Eco's texts and sources, these passages undoubtedly establish the worth of Farronato's...