Abstract
La misteriosa fiamma della Regina Loana, like each of Eco's previous novels, may be read as “a fictional summa” of much of the author's theoretical work. The peculiar malady of the protagonist, the loss of autobiographical memory coupled with an overactive “cultural memory,” allows Eco both to dramatize and call into question key notions of his theoretical work. This essay situates La misteriosa fiamma in the context of the author's previous work and examines the way in which Eco's most recent novel explores the themes of encyclopedic competence, rationality, hermetic drift and unlimited semiosis, high brow and low brow cultural production. Eco shows how the associative ability that allows unlimited semiosis to function may give way to hermetic drift, infinite deferral and even madness. The encyclopedia that contains the totality of human knowledge may suddenly come unbound, reflecting, in its loose pages, fragmentation, incompletion and disjunction. La misteriosa fiamma della Regina Loana serves as a valuable and original contribution to Eco's life-long scholarly pursuits and as a reflection on the value of those pursuits from the perspective of advancing age.
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