Eco's Postscript is also a manifesto proclaiming the authority of serious historical fiction: the characters in a historical novel may not appear in encyclopedias, he notes, but everything they do could only occur in that time and place. ... Their success seems to have surprised Eco, who puzzled for "two years" after the publication of his first novel, "trying to figure out why the book was being read by people who surely could not like such 'cultivated' books" (Eco, 1983). ... This prototypical Benedictine community was not intended to be built, so the designers were freed fr...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The relationships between women have evolved throughout the ages possibly as a result of the transformations of society as these texts explore; The Shakespearean era where only men were allowed to act, the Victorian era in which everything must be prim and proper and women should still do their work as a mother and wife to the Post Modern era in which women are free to express themselves in the same way that men are. ... Indeed, the full title of the book is "Jane Eyre: An Autobiography" and it is therefore written in first person. ...

• Word Count: 3018
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate