The Name of the Rose (thoughts)

What's in a Name? Challenge

A few years ago, The Name of the Rose was my introduction to Umberto Eco (appropriate, since it was his first novel). Since then, I’ve read and enjoyed The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna and Foucoult’s Pendulem, but I decided to revisit the original as my ‘plant’ selection for the What’s in a Name? challenge.

I found it just as delightful as the first time round (although I remembered how the murderer was killing his victims, I didn’t remember who he was or what his motive could be), but I’d also like to explain how I read an Eco novel. I do not go into one expecting to understand every single sentence, or even every single idea. Instead, I expect Eco to create his own reality, and I’m just along for the ride. So I don’t freak out if something confuses me; I just keep reading, and usually it becomes clear. I was reading reviews over at Amazon, and the negative ones were all like ‘all of the people who say they liked it are lying to be pretentious, because there’s no way they understood it.’ I think those people have missed the point; this is a novel, a separate world, not a philosophical treatise. Sure, there’s a lot of medieval philosophy in it, but those discussions are to better illuminate the characters and the setting. And while I remember my high school Latin well enough to get the gist of the various Latin passages, I certainly didn’t know every word. So, if you go into this book expecting to know exactly what’s going on at every moment, you will probably hate it. If, on the other hand, you’d love to imagine life from the perspective of a medieval monk, and read about a juicy mystery in the meantime, I think you’ll enjoy it.

In the above paragraph, I assumed you’d heard of The Name of the Rose, but just in case you haven’t, I’ll briefly explain what to expect. The majority of the book is the memoir of Adso, a Benedictine monk who was a novice in 1327 attached to Brother William, a British Franciscan. Italy, and the Catholic world, is in turmoil; the Pope and secular kings are clashing, and the Franciscans have been accused of a major heresy. William has been touring through Italy for political purposes (since we hear the story from Adso’s perspective, we don’t know precisely what mission William had), and he and Adso end up at an Italian Benedictine monastery renouned for the largest library in Christendom. Right before their arrival, a monk had been found dead, and since William is a reknowned logician and investigator, the abbot tells him to figure out the murderer, preferably before an inquisitor sent by the Pope shows up in a few days time. It quickly becomes clear that the murder revolves around the library, which is laid out in a secret manner only the Librarian, his assistant, and the abbot know. Others may only request and read any of its many books with permission, which has been granted less and less often recently.

Since Eco wrote from the perspective of a medieval monk, the murder mystery does not always have front and center; if you go in expecting a simple book, you’ll probably end up angry (for a well-written and straightforward mystery series about medieval monks, check out Ellis Peters’ Brother Caedfel books instead, beginning with A Morbid Taste for Bones). The monks often discuss theological points (i.e.: laughter, poverty, sex), William often lectures Adso on the principles of logic, and when the inquisitor and his companions eventually arrive, there’s a whole lot of mess concerning theology and, more importantly, power that breaks out. If you don’t care about any of this, I’d recommend you skip the book. But since even as a child I imagined being a medieval monk (seriously; never wanted to be a nun though), I really enjoyed all of the discussions; Eco is a medievalist by trade, so he’s at home in such a world. In his postscript, Eco refers to the first hundred pages as a kind of “penance or initiation,” so if you’re unsure about whether this is a book for you, try out the beginning. If it’s not for you, you’ll know pretty quickly, but do try to give it a fair chance. While the tone might turn you off at first, once you settle into it you might find yourself enjoying it!

At its heart, I think The Name of the Rose is a cry for freedom of knowledge and the exchange of ideas; that so many wonderful books are locked away in a library built as a maze is at the root of most of the abbey’s problems. The debates about heresy are also fundamentally about whether the Church will allow people of competing viewpoints to debate, or if one, official interpretation will be supported, if necessary, by murder. William, Eco’s primary ‘lecture’ vehicle since he’s the older, experienced monk that the narrator looks up and often turns to for advice, obviously believes that even if an idea is wrong, it deserves its place and ought to be talked about. And this is a lesson as important in the twenty-first century as in the fourteenth.

Have you read The Name of the Rose, or any other of Eco’s fiction? What did you think?