... counting the steps in a fourteenth-century stairway. Eco's Postscript is also a manifesto proclaiming the authority of serious historical fiction: the characters in a historical novel may not appear in encyclopedias, he notes, but everything they do could only occur in that time and place. Made-up events and characters tell us things "that history books have never told us so clearly," so ... readers in the complications of early-fourteenth-century theological and political controversies and philosophical debates over nominalism. He further perplexes ordinary readers with the linguistic ...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate