Historical time in Umberto Eco’s novels about the Middle Ages

The study aims to identify the features of modeling historical time in Umberto Eco’s novels “The Name of the Rose” and “Baudolino”. The article examines historical time in these works in its relationship with the worldview attitudes of the postmodern era. The key characteristics of the postmodern historical novel are analyzed, in which the past is intertwined with the present through intertextuality, and the depiction of a bygone era is supplemented by reflections on the nature of history, which is subjected to ironic reinterpretation. The scientific originality of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time, the specificity of historical time in U. Eco’s novels is revealed through the lens of the subject of narration. As a result of the study, it was established that in the novel “The Name of the Rose”, the modeling of the historical time of the Middle Ages is achieved through the temporal individualization of the language and consciousness of the narrator with the help of intertextual connections, while in the novel “Baudolino”, the image of the narrator, the born liar Baudolino, brings to the fore the key idea for the author of the novel of demonstrating the illusoriness of History, in connection with which historical time appears in one of its postmodern modifications – historiographical time. The data obtained indicate that a substantial approach to modeling historical time through the reconstruction of history from the point of view of the subject, the introduction of the figure of an unreliable narrator, the textualization of consciousness, etc. is manifested in U. Eco’s novels about the Middle Ages, which is essential for postmodern historical prose.