Umberto EcoвЂ™s The Name of the Rose has been perceived as essentially being a detective story. William Weaver, 1980) stands as a pinnacle of historical fiction and metafiction with its multilayered historical and literary allusions, and has also contributed to semiotic readings, the text can also be analyzed as an intentionally and intellectually designed detective novel.

Though Umberto EcoвЂ™s The Name of the Rose (Trans. A mystery or detective novel, according to Dennis Porter, вЂњprefigures at the outset the form of its denouement by virtue of the highly visible question mark hanging over its openingвЂќ (Quoted in Scaggs 34).ДЄnswering this question requires, in PortorвЂ™s view, requires вЂњa reading approach that parallels the investigative process as a process of making connectionsвЂќ (34) This вЂњquestion markвЂќ, according to John Scaggs, вЂњencourages the reader to imitate the detective, and to retrace the causative steps from effects back to causes, and in doing so to attempt to answer the question at the heart of all stories of mystery and detection: who did it? вЂќ (35) The term вЂwhodunnitвЂ™ was hence coined in the 1930s to describe a type of fiction in which the puzzle or mystery element was the central focus. In recent years, the universally popular detective genre, which was invented in 1841 by Edgar Allan Poe, has been the site of various critical inquiries and theoretical presumptions.

The name of the rose puzzle