Lavirint u tekstu i lavirint teksta: Borhesove "račvaste staze" u romanu Ime ruže Umberta Eka

Abstract

The paper provides insight into the intertextual connections between Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, focusing on the formation of both physical and literary labyrinths which lie at the core of Eco’s first novel. The formation of labyrinths in Borges’s and Eco’s fiction will be researched on two levels. Thus, the first part of the paper deals with the possible physical forms of labyrinths and their potential metaphorical meanings, while the second part is focused on the formation of the literary labyrinth, i.e. the rhizomatic structure of the text, which opens possibilities for analysing complex semiotic processes. Finally, Eco’s novel will be analysed in comparison with Borges’s stories “The Garden of Forking Paths”, “Death and the Compass”, “The Library of Babel”, and “The Immortal”, with the aim of delving into the numerous metaphysical dimensions their labyrinths are enriched with.