The Name of the Rose by Italian novelist, columnist and essayist Umberto Eco is an amazing novel that was translated into English from its original Italian.
Setting:
A Benedictine Abbey in Italy, run by Abbot Abo, which consists of 60 monks, various servants (approximately 180) and a lot of relics. Brother William (a learned Fransiscan) and his Benedictine novice, scribe and friend Adso arrive to sort out the strange apparant murder of a monk, Adelmo.
Main Characters:
Story:
William and Adso arrive at the Abbey, and are put to work to investigate the death of Adelmo, who has apparently been murdered by being pushed out of a window in the Aedificium. Was it murder or suicide? Day by day (the book is split into 7 days, each day is split into time periods, eg vespers, nones), a monk is murdered in bizarre ways that seem to link in with a prophesy of the coming of the Anti-Christ. A convoluted plotline quickly ensnares the reader into a world of intricate detail and intrigue as William and Adso struggle to work out who is murdering monks before more are killed. There is never a boring chapter, and the plot never lapses. Each page contains revelations, and heretical thoughts run through the plotline. 'Every conceivable sign the universe contains'¹ is left as clues, and William and Adso spend their days and nights trying to figure out how the death of an illuminator, a prophesy, a library, a labyrinth, a book, finis Africae and prejudices are linked. The ending is a rollercoaster of emotions and amazing confessions. The final paragraph is an amazing revelation, which adds a final twist to the story.
The Name of the Rose is a magnificent book. It is beautiful and emotional. The grammar (from the translating) is a bit cringe-worthy, but the sheer genius of Umberto Eco overcomes this editorial oversight. This novel is highly reccommended, and it is a humbling experience to have the honour of reading it... and I strongly suggest that you do!
¹ New York Times Book Review
For the movie (similar to the book) also critically points out the veneration of the Virgin Mary and the...ah...practice of male love, and reveals the confusion of the monks regarding the worship of a woman who in their theology is blessed above all while real women are perverse and untouchable, fornicators with Satan, the cause for the fall of man. There is a scene where the naked peasant girl, riding atop Adso as they climax, is given a similar cinematic treatment as an earlier shot of the Virgin as a marble statue above the prostrate elder monk, who loves her with his his eyes averted, face against the cold floor. The symbolism could hardly be lost (that is unless one is too busy admiring the actress's admirable performance.)
Having read the book and seen the movie, and appreciated the erudite discussion elsewhere on the topic of the literary name itself, I sense that there is (or could be) more to glean from the title. Is the name of the rose indeed the same thing as the rose itself? Is the Virgin and the lost woman the same in the end or is one more real; one for having been given a holy name and then venerated as an image in stone by a man for all of his adult life, or the other for having simply been carnal with him for a passing moment before meeting the flames and being lost to the world for eternity? And if all we have is the name (or even less, just the scent and the feel) are we able to say we have it still though the thing is lost, nameless, and burnt? It seems to me to speak to the ongoing struggle between the abstract and the physical, idea and reality, stone and flesh, as we have struggled with so many abstractions over the ages, and not always to our profit. The point of the tale seems to be that the naming of the Virgin and carving her in stone did not make her more real than the nameless, lost girl giving her best to a young monk, who is himself to be lost into the church for the rest of his days. For at the end of his life Adso is not clear about what is gained or lost in his lifetime service of God, but he readily confesses that he has never forgotten that one moment of touch, that contact, with the flesh and life of a girl who was to be lost unto the flames of the Inquisition. What they gained, and then pitifully lose, strikes us just as nameless and timeless as purest stone, whatever the shape that stone might take.
Others have written about the deep layers of The Name of the Rose (enjoyable as a murder mystery on the surface, with allegory lurking in the depths).
I'll just add that Umberto Eco used symbols and layers even for his characters' names and appearances.
It's easy to lift the masks of (at least) two of the characters:
William of Baskerville is Sherlock Holmes
Jorge of Burgos is Jorge L. Borges
Eco also had some plain old fun with the names:
printable version chaos
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