Clearly, any tale of shipwreck and isolation in the Western tradition calls to mind such precedents as Homer's The Odyssey (1050-850 B.C) and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). Eco knows that, and he pays several tributes to earlier works, most obviously in the mysterious footprint Roberto spots on the Daphne before he has met Caspar Wanderdrossel face to face.

With its resident menagerie, the ship also recalls Noah's Ark, and Eco devotes a number of brilliant passages to exploring the associations. One could go on listing sources and precedents for many pages. There is no more selfconsciously literary author writing today than Umberto Eco; in a sense, all that he has read serves as a precedent for his fiction, and he often seems to have read everything.