The game of true or false in Umberto Eco. Concerning O cemitério de Praga

Abstract

This paper analyzes The Prague Cemetery (2011), a novel by Umberto Eco, in order to verify the literary project of this Italian author, whose work shows the intention of breaking classical forms and categories of novelistic prose. In this sense, this narrative admits several classifications: antinovel, thriller, historical novel in which is inserted official documents. In dialogue with evocative French feuilletonist narratives, by converging to the nineteenth-century authors such as Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue, Umberto Eco explores technique of "coupe", since he assigns to a certain episodes of the intrigue the strain that is responsible for awakening reader's curiosity for the next scenes in the text. Besides, it is added to the trickery of the narrator the hybridism of genres and styles, the establishment of the simulation and strategy structural mise en abîme, a voice that contextualizes and translates the racial hatred, the freemasonry, and anti-Semitism.