... 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 ... the novel of emergence, itself an apparently self-organizing emergent phenomenon among several writers in contemporary culture. The popular success of Eco's novels is surprising because they all are complicated narratives, intellectually challenging, packed with arcane information, and co...

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