Inventing the Enemy. When Propaganda Becomes History
Inventing the Enemy. When Propaganda Becomes History

Summary/Abstract: Umberto Eco’s latest novel, The Prague Cemetery, has a complicated metatextual plot in which, as the writer himself stated, he attempts to create the most repugnant of all literary characters, in other words, some sort of “perfect loather” who detests everyone, including himself. I will discuss the various stereotypes of otherness, the way these stereotypical images interact, and how the author weaves the prejudices related to almost every European nationality, but mostly to the Jews, into the image of the “supreme enemy,” an image divested of any ornament and so presumptuous that it becomes almost dense. Moreover, in relation to the image I mentioned above, I analyse the mechanisms the language uses as a vehicle of deception especially when it describes what is familiar in propagandist texts. I also focus on the different fictional filters applied to real historical events (and texts) in order to entice the reader into trying to decipher a complex and factitious labyrinth in which the barrier between truth and fiction no longer matters, it is purely accidental, and has only one purpose—to generate conspiracies.

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