Modernity and Its Mannerisms – The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
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Abstract
The theme of this paper is Eco’s novel The Island of the Day Before (L’isola giorno prima), which, in a very specific way, addresses two crises of modernity (mannerism and postmodernism). The first is visible through the development of the novel’s plot – the story is set at the time of the first major scientific revolution, and the other is visible through literary procedures that are the result of the features of the postmodern novel. In this way, employing various techniques and procedures, such as autoreferentiality, irony, textual play, and possible worlds, Eco’s hybrid novel deconstructs the apprehension of modernity (a unique understanding of history, the integrity of the world, the self-centered subject) on both the level of content (17th century) and the formal level (20th century).