Eco has a flair for the
humorous and he uses it to some
extent in all of his novels. But in Baudolino it abounds and serves to weave the central plot in what is an intellectual farce, a game that takes the
reader not only into the lost Medieval world, but also into an invented
world that parodies as in a fun house mirror the source of its inspiration. The year is 1204 and Baudolino is a knight in the Fourth Crusade while Constantinople is being sacked. In the chaos and carnage of the events that served to further alienate the East from the West, Baudolino saves a high court Byzantine historian, and so a frame is set up within which the
story of Baudolino unfolds, a story of mystery, plots and murders, monsters, fantastic lands, and, naturally, a quest. The novel is best enjoyed if the reader has some background or interest in the Medieval period since intertextuality is used to great extent in providing a humorous effect.
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