Postmodernism Historical Writing In The Prague Cemetery

In an interview with the Paris Review,Umberto Eco,a famous Italian writer and semioticist,admitted that he was horribly old-fashioned.Like Cicero,he still firmly believed that "history is the teacher of life".Indeed,the influence of the past cannot be denied or eliminated at all.Eco believes that the best way to face history is to reread it ironically.However,Eco is not satisfied with just commenting on the past and staying in the past.He builds a bridge between the present and the future through his novel creation,which reflects Eco’s concern for history as being poetic,philosophical and scientific.The Prague Cemetery,published by Eco in 2010,is a typical metafiction of historiography.Based on a more sober historicism,the postmodernism historical writing style has completely written and presented historical discourse.A series of intertextual deconstructions are carried out on historical narration,which brings us closer to history infinitely and at the same time make us still keep a clear consciousness and face the lies and falsehoods in history,which shows Eco’ s profound thinking and contemplation of history,present condition and future.The thesis consists of introduction,four chapters of the main text and conclusion,totally six parts.The introduction clarifies the origin of the selection of this topic,sorts and summarizes the research status of Umberto Eco’ s novel The Prague Cemetery both at home and overseas,and finally discusses the research ideas and methods of the present paper.The first chapter puts Eco in the background of postmodernism historical trend of thought.This paper discusses Eco’s two postmodernism historical writing tendencies and unique creative features in the creative process of The Prague Cemetery.We are convinced that Eco dismantles and reconstructs history in The Prague Cemetery with more "truth" and less fiction than before through narrative and symbolic historical writing methods.The second chapter analyzes the narrative strategies adopted by Eco to show the ambiguity and fragmentation of historical discourse,which reflects the characteristics of pluralistic dialogue and complex fragmentation of historical writing as a narrative discourse.Through metaphor,Eco also shows us the suppressed discourse power of women as the "other" in history and the dislocation of lies as historical discourse in writing.The third chapter discusses Eco’s intertextual deconstruction of historical writing,whether it is parody and irony of historical figures,microscopic re-narration of historical events,intertextuality with historical documents or self-disclosure of imitation and reproduction,which is accompanied by strong self-referential,reproduces the complex relationship between man and the past,and highlight the textual and fictional characteristics of postmodernim historical writing.The fourth chapter analyzes Eco’s profound historical concern through the postmodernism historical writing in The Prague Cemetery.Eco leads us to explore the fog of history step by step,clear away the uncertain history and memory,and fully realize the indelible pain brought by the war and massacre evolved from anti-Semitism to the whole mankind.Also he maks us look for a different way to understand history in the history full of lies and conspiracies,look at the world with a more sober and prudent consciousnessand,and find the door that really leads to the future in history.The epilogue summarizes the characteristics of postmodernism historical writing in Eco’s The Prague Cemetery,and further expounds the significance of Eco’s unique historical writing.Eco provides us with a brand-new way to understand history,and keeps history alive forever,instead of being rigidly sealed in time.