Eco's Baudolino: medieval myth-weaver or open wordsmith?
The following thesis will analyze several segments of Umberto Eco’s novel Baudolino in an attempt to identify to what degree the concept of the Open Work appears in the author’s literary creations. In the first part of the thesis, we will take a look at the core definitions of what constitutes an open work, as defined in the 1962 essay of the same name. We will outline the categorization of open works, the concept of art as epistemological metaphor and the ways in which modern authors have used indeterminacy as a creative tool. In the second part of the thesis, we will more closely examine some episodes from the novel Baudolino and analyze them in accordance with the theories outlined above. Special attention will be devoted to the symbolic interpretation of the fantastic elements in the novel, which serve as open elements.
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