Abstract
While many outside the library community have commented at length on the central role of the library in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose (Milan, 1980; New York, 1983), librarians themselves have been notably silent. This reserve is surprising when one considers the vast and intricate library dystopia which Eco has created for his novel, the casting of a librarian as archvillain, and the use of a library book as this villain's principal murder weapon. Beyond these matters of setting and casting, however, close examination of Eco's imaginary library and its literary antecedents, but also of Eco's yet untranslated essay De Bibliotheca (1981), will reveal the author's use of the library metaphor to be anything but casual. It is instead an image charged with meaning, both within the context of postmodern literary theory and as an element of Eco's own agenda for real-existing libraries.
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