transformation

I remember reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose in first year English. The novel is a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery.  We'd learnt different theoretical approaches to literature and, for the final essay, we had to apply one of those approaches to the novel. 

I chose Post-colonial Theory and one of the things I wrote about was how the monks in the story subverted the texts they were writing, by drawing in the margins. That's the idea behind post-colonial theory - there is power at the margins. There is a creative tension that is concentrated at the furthest extremes away from the center. 

I remember as well, in The Name of the Rose, the wonderful sense Eco conveyed of a world that was changing - being transformed by a new understanding and sensibility, even then, in the medieval era. 

I didn't understand most of the novel, to be honest. I hardly knew what was going on most of the time and couldn't grasp the ideas that were being conveyed, but I got impressions from it, and when time came to write my essay, I was able to analyze it based on those impressions. It was all an exercise in learning.