Eco & Ricœur: Perspectives in Narrative Theory.

This paper explores affinities of Umberto Eco's narratological writings with the hermeneutic tradition: comparison with Paul Ricœur shows these extending well beyond early debts to Luigi Pareyson and marginal jousts with Gianni Vattimo into one of the main avenues of Eco's thought. The paper compares Ricœur's and Eco's use of Aristotle's Poetics as the foundational text of a modern hermeneutic narratology, and their respective interpretations (with Gadamer's assistance) of narrativity as a principle of human identity. In both these areas Eco precedes Ricœur. Also considered are their common interest in complementing the theory of narrative identity with one of objective textual meaning, for which Eco is better known and which the critical literature has tended to censure. The effect of the comparison is to emphasize the way Eco's different texts in this area complement each other, constituting a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and whose originality and fertility have not been widely recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]