Complicitous Critique And Historical Sublime:The Irony Writing In Umberto Eco’s Historical Metafictions

The research object of this paper is Umberto Eco’s historical metafictions,which focusing on the irony writing in postmodern historical metafictions.The ‘irony’ here is based on Linda Hutcheon’s concept of irony.It is not to use a deep meaning to deny the surface meaning,but it is a new meaning arising from the coexistence of double meanings,which is the core of the postmodern historical metafictions.In other words,postmodern historical metafictions achieve subversion by irony rather than rejection.The starting point of this paper is that finding a coincident point between Umberto Eco’s postmodern theory and the irony writing in historical metafictions.The first chapter defines the concept of historical metafiction,comparing historical metafictions with metafictions and comparing historical metafictions with historical novels.The comparisons not only show some similarities among the three,but also show some differences among the three.The second chapter and the third chapter,as a main part of this paper,emphasis on the analysis of texts.The Name of the Rose constructs the irony writing of the postmodern historical metafictions.Firstly,the metanarrative level meaning system as the background narrative is juxtaposed with the story level meaning system as a series of events arising from the monastery to generate a new system of ironic meaning.Second,in The Name of the Rose,Eco combines historical and literary intertextuality,making the novel a reflection on the external historical world and the internal literary nature,which blurs the boundary between history and literature.Third,Thirdly,as an anti-detective novel,The Name of the Rose mocks the narrative conventions of the detective novel,but it is created by the mode of the detective novel,which makes the narrative conventions of the detective novel continue to spread.Another novel Baudolino also constructs a irony writing in history from Elias’ s historical sublime perspective.History is a territory that can never be reached.Historians desire to approach history,but also understand it can’t reach the history and show a deferredattitude.The irony of history is generated by the vacillation of the dual meanings of desire and deferral.As historical metafictions,The Name of the Rose and Baudolino show a duality of irony meaning.This indicates that Umberto Eco’ reflectivity on traditional narrative and history.Traditional narrative and history should not be rejected,but should be grasped.The last chapter summarizes the whole paper and reflects on Linda Hutcheon’s irony theory,which showing that Hutcheon’s irony theory is just a new vocabulary in his own life experience to negate the old vocabulary of another life experience,which is a redescription of life experience.