Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

Overview

The book derives its title from Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium but Eco also cites Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler as inspiration because the novel "is concerned with the presence of the reader in the story" which was also the subject of the lectures and book.

Eco's general concerns, besides that of literary criticism, fall under the subjects of techniques of fiction and narration or rhetoric.

Table of contents

1. "Entering the Woods"
2. "The Woods of Loisy"
3. "Lingering in the Woods"
4. "Possible Woods"
5. "The Strange Case of Rue Servandon"
6. "Fictional Protocols"