| Umberto Eco is a world-famous philosopher,semiotician and novelist.Eco’s theoretical research involves many fields,such as aesthetics,semiotics,literary theory,etc.At the same time,Eco also wrote seven novels,such as The Name of The Rose,Foucault’ Pendulum,and Baudolino.He was regarded as the most dazzling Italian writer in the 20th century.The uniqueness and research value of Eco lies in that he combines the two identities of theorist and novelist,so the relationship between his theory and fiction can be reflected from his different types of creation.Through the analysis of Eco’s semiotics theory and literary theory,the close reading of his first two novels The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum,this paper holds that there is an ironic relationship between Eco’s theory and the novel.In fact,this kind of ironic relationship is mainly manifested in two aspects,on the one hand,the novel is the embodiment of the theory of practice,it mainly refers to his novel and semiotic theory share some conceptual structure,mainly manifested in the encyclopedia of semiotics and abduction in The Name of The Rose,interpretation semiotics in the Foucault’s Pendulum.On the other hand,the novel expresses "the place that cannot be theorized",which includes the following aspects:the first is that some of the philosophical problems discussed in Eco’s novels are the problems encountered in the process of theorization,which are mainly reflected in The Name ofThe Rose for "laughter and truth";the second is that novels become a way to solve problems that cannot be solved by theories.This is mainly reflected in the construction of the possible world in The Name of The Rose,which solves the contradiction from the global encyclopedia to the local encyclopedia;the third is that the novel reflects on some parts of the theme of the theory,which is mainly reflected in The Name of The Rose’s reflection on as a tool to explain the world,whether the semiotic model is an effective tool,and Foucault’s pendulum reflects on the interpretation of community and literal meaning as the interpretation criteria and the legitimacy of knowledge;the forth is some problems that cannot be concretized through theories,which is mainly reflected in the dialogue relationship between the middle ages and the post-modern,the past and the modern,one of the themes of The Name of The Rose,as well as the author expressed his own experience and emotion when writing this novel;the fifth is that literary works have renewed the semiotic system,which is mainly reflected in the creative interpretation of the protagonist of Foucault’s pendulum,which has created a new circuit for the encyclopedia.The above five aspects show that it is precisely the contradictions and ambivalence(not limited to the contradictions existing in Eco’s theory)contained in Eco’s novels that can be"untheorized",and it just revealed the limitation of the theory.To sum up,these two aspects make the relationship between Eco’s novels and theories lie in an irony and intertextuality that both admit and deny.It is precisely because Eco’s novels are not completely complementary to his theories that his novels are more attractive and thus gain independent aesthetic significance and value. |
