Desire deferred
(Re‐)reading Eco's Labyrinths
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20156728 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leora Cruddas (Center For Children With Special Needs, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 314-337 |
| Publication date | 1996-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387 |
| Publisher | Unisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02564719608530142 |
| OpenAlex | W1978869994 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
I will explore the operation of the labyrinth both within The Name of the Rose (1984) (as Eco's labyrinth) and as a condition of reading (as the labyrinth of discourse). The paper is about this potentially infinite space of conjecture outside of which one can never step. My project is thus similar to that of metaphor. Metaphor does not afford access to truth or meaning: it is both a provisional loss of meaning (because of its dissemination within syntax, its passing through a supplement of syntactic resistance), and a history with its sights set on the reappropriation of literal meaning.1 So too, the labyrinth as metaphor governs the production and retrieval of meaning, or rather elides the two. The labyrinth may be seen to confound positions of reader and writer: it belongs to none and floats as metaphor and of metaphor, unable to coordinate metaphor with the production of truth. As the dominant metaphor it will not return to the major transcendental signifieds, God or the Sun. Metaphor celebrates the Nietzschean relative status of truth: in this sense using metaphor amounts to anamnesis: recalling to memory that “truth is a mobile army of metaphors” (Derrida 1982: 217)
Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Literature · Metaphor · Metonymy · Sight · Syntax · Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Themes in Literature Analysis
The Critical Difference
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language
Ec[h]o in Fabula
Writing and Difference
Naming the Rose
Palimpsests and Laughter
The "Model Reader" and the Thermodynamic Model
Gaudy Rose
The Invisible Worm
White Mythology
An Ethics of Significance
The Name of the Book
Fear of Writing, or Adso and the Poisoned Text
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |