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Mirthful faces in The Name of the Rose

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Abstract

This paper explores the ‘mirthful face’ in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film adaptation. Debates over the political and moral significance of the mirthful face are at the center of both texts’ interpretations of laughter and humor in medieval culture; but the novel’s withholding of facial description sits in stark contrast to the film’s embrace of contemporary perceptions of what ‘medieval faces’ would have looked like and how they might be read. Comparing Annaud’s visual language of ‘historical physiognomy’ with those of filmmakers Werner Hertzog and Michael Haneke, the essay situates both film and book within a late-twentieth-century use of the Middle Ages to comment on contemporary authoritarian and radical politics.

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Notes

  1. For the most part this essay cites the 1983 English translation of Eco’s 1980 Italian novel. The original Italian text is included when it makes relevant allusions to faces or facial expressions. Page references are to these editions.

  2. Translations of Annaud are by the author.

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Acknowledgements

The research for this paper is supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship for the Project ‘Comic Medievalism and the Modern World’ (FT120100931).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Louise D’Arcens

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  1. Louise D’Arcens
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Correspondence to Louise D’Arcens.

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D’Arcens, L. Mirthful faces in The Name of the Rose . Postmedieval 8, 51–66 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0034-y

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