“The Name of the Rose”: Novel, Film, TV Series between Intermediality and Transmediality

We will consider the diverse strategies of adaptation employed in the case of the famous novel The Name of the Rose (1980) by Umberto Eco, examining the complex passage from Eco's novel to Jean Jacques Annaud’s film (The Name of the Rose, 1986) and the new Italian TV series (The Name of the Rose, 2019 - on air). We will look for some translational ‘continuities’, trying a comparative semiotic analysis of some sequences of the novel and the film and the TV series. Working on the TV series we will also explore some extensions and ‘discontinuities’ of transmedia reinterpretations. According to Mittell, transmedia storytelling could be both “centripetal” and “centrifugal”: we will analyse these logics it in the serial construction of the first season of The Name of the Rose, deepening the backstories of the characters or creating a sort of “paraquel” for totally new characters.