In his fifth novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, the world renowned narrator semiotician directs his encyclopedic fiction once again to several levels of readers. In many ways similar to the case of Foucault's Pendulum Eco here directs his narration to a particular generation of readers. Underneath the beautiful illustrations that accompany this unusual and brilliant hybrid hypetextual historical fiction can be detected some postmodern neorealistic strategies in revisiting the fascist eras of the thirties and early forties. Eco's narration of cultural and political hegemony and his familiar treatment of intertextuality are examined along with his personal stories and the central and underlying motif of the novel: storing and retrieving memories.
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