Resumen de Introduction
IN THE OPENING PAGES of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Salvatore welcomes two travellers, the narrator and the Franciscan some time. In spite of his name and his religious attire, Salvatore is first described having more in common with the diabolical than with the divine. His origins are unknown, he is likened to "a hairy and hoofed hybrid," his face is "put together with pieces from other people's faces" and his language is an invention of his own. It is a mixture of Latin and other languages, a Babelian confusion of sounds and syntax. Salvatore is described by the narrator of the novel as a monstrous hybrid, unable to fit into established dichotomous identities. He is located at the crossroads of peoples, cultures, languages, simultaneously belonging to all places and to none in particular, and takes pleasure in shifting from one performative position to another. This fictional encounter between the narrator and Salvatore takes place in the early fourteenth century. The monk's in-betweenness is personified as both monstrous and abject because it is ambiguous and it disturbs order, identity and signification. (...).
