Umberto Eco e l’Apocalisse

Abstract

The Apocalypse is a mythologema that has provided symbolic forms and narrative structures to contemporary literature: Karl Löwith, Frank Kermode, Ernst Bloch are just some of the scholars who have focused on the endurance and productivity of the apocalyptic paradigm in the secular age. Umberto Eco has entertained a long dealing with the Apocalypse, ever since the publication of Apocalypse Postponed. In his essays and novels, the Apocalypse appears as a dispositive of revelation, but also of concealment and falsification (The Name of the Rose), and as a transmedia model of translation and reuse (Beato di Liebana, Enrico Baj, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana).