The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco. Translated from Italian by William Weaver.
Warner Books. First published 1980.
Umberto Eco, who passed away a few months ago (February 2016), was a professor of semiotics, primarily at the University of Bologna, Italy. Semiotics is the study of signs, including language, and the meaning they signify. It works at a more basic level than linguistics, taking into consideration all kinds of signs, even those not actually 'intended' to communicate anything by the maker of the sign. Thus, modes of dress, or unconscious hand gestures, are as much within the ambit of the semiotician's study, as written or spoken language, or road signs. Eco has published many academic books and articles that are chiefly accessible to his peers. He has also written about half-a-dozen brilliant and profound novels that are basically elaborations of his thoughts about ideas, concepts, facts, history - and their communication. 'The Name of the Rose' was the first of these.
The novel operates at several levels. At the most basic and most entertaining level it is a richly detailed detective story set in medieval Italy. The Englishman William of Baskerville, is a Franciscan friar called to investigate the strange death of a young novice at a Benedictine abbey. His arrival is greeted by another death, and each day follows with yet another, until, despite having many clues, he only stumbles upon the answers, and detects the murderer, almost by chance. Apart having a name which evokes Conan Doyle, William has a Watsonian narrator named Adso, and his method of detection is explicitly modeled on Sherlock Holmes. And this is another layer of the book, where the rational is set up against superstition and faith. William occasionally explains his method, in particular in the opening sequence, in which, as he arrives at the abbey, from small signs among the bushes and the trees, he deduces the flight and subsequent capture of the Abbott's favourite horse from the stables. In Sherlockian fashion, he presents the results, only explaining the chain of deduction leading up to them later to Adso. However, later, in the discussions between William and Adso, Eco illustrates how rationalism leads to absurd scholasticism (such as arguments about how many angels can be accommodated on the head of a pin) whenever the premises from which the arguments begin are drawn from faith or superstition. Here Eco evokes both Roger Bacon, who urged that controlled experience (experimental data) must be the foundation of deduction, as well as William of Okham, who laid down the principle that for any phenomena the simplest explanation is the best one. These two medieval scientists are introduced as William of Baskerville's teachers. Yet another thread in the book is the political tension between the Franciscans, who insisted that Christ privileged poverty above riches, and the wealthy Christian establishment that insisted that Jesus himself allowed accumulation of riches in the service of God and the people. These portions of the book describe many historical events and characters from the 13th and 14th centuries.
There are many ideas that are also frequently found in less serious literature. There is a labyrinth in the abbey which is actually the library stacked with rare, and sometimes forbidden books, hiding a mysterious object at its heart. There is a ossarium (a storage room for human bones) which leads to the labyrinth. There are constant references to the Book of Revelations in the Bible, which describes the fantastic scenes that will occur on the Day of Judgement. And there are conspiracy theories, which lead to catastrophic consequences. These features are superficially like those found, for example, in the novels of Dan Brown. Eco, however is far more of a serious student, and far more ambitious. He does not seek to use his knowledge to merely manipulate the readers' emotions. Overlying the entire novel are his basic concerns as he explores the meanings of words, the influence of context in the interpretation of texts, and the deep and sometimes terrible consequences such interpretations may lead to. He questions the idea of history as an objective, scientifically valid, true sequence of events, some being the cause and some being the effect, that existed in the past. Indeed, towards the end of the book, Eco has William question even his own methodology and his deductive process, doubting if it can always lead to the the truth. The Friar points out that he solved the mystery only by chance, and, even earlier, when he made his deduction about the horse, he could have easily have been wrong, since the signs on which he based his results were equally capable of being interpreted differently.
The translation is marvelous, and though many portions of the book deal with stodgy academic matters, the thrilling pace never flags from the first page to the last. There are several set pieces - the deduction about the horse, an inquisition, an 'auto de fe' - which add to the 'bestseller' atmosphere. Umberto Eco talks deeply and well about medieval Christianity and the philosophical battles that were then waged. But also, there are references, sometime playful, to many other images, names, stories and characters from contemporary popular culture. The Holmes canon is one example. Another is the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges who wrote about labyrinthine libraries. I am sure there are many that I have missed.
All of Eco's works of fiction are profound and popular at the same time. (His non-fiction is profound, but not so popular.) All of them repay several readings and re-readings. This, his first novel, and probably the one most widely read, is certainly no exception to that rule.
There are many ideas that are also frequently found in less serious literature. There is a labyrinth in the abbey which is actually the library stacked with rare, and sometimes forbidden books, hiding a mysterious object at its heart. There is a ossarium (a storage room for human bones) which leads to the labyrinth. There are constant references to the Book of Revelations in the Bible, which describes the fantastic scenes that will occur on the Day of Judgement. And there are conspiracy theories, which lead to catastrophic consequences. These features are superficially like those found, for example, in the novels of Dan Brown. Eco, however is far more of a serious student, and far more ambitious. He does not seek to use his knowledge to merely manipulate the readers' emotions. Overlying the entire novel are his basic concerns as he explores the meanings of words, the influence of context in the interpretation of texts, and the deep and sometimes terrible consequences such interpretations may lead to. He questions the idea of history as an objective, scientifically valid, true sequence of events, some being the cause and some being the effect, that existed in the past. Indeed, towards the end of the book, Eco has William question even his own methodology and his deductive process, doubting if it can always lead to the the truth. The Friar points out that he solved the mystery only by chance, and, even earlier, when he made his deduction about the horse, he could have easily have been wrong, since the signs on which he based his results were equally capable of being interpreted differently.
The translation is marvelous, and though many portions of the book deal with stodgy academic matters, the thrilling pace never flags from the first page to the last. There are several set pieces - the deduction about the horse, an inquisition, an 'auto de fe' - which add to the 'bestseller' atmosphere. Umberto Eco talks deeply and well about medieval Christianity and the philosophical battles that were then waged. But also, there are references, sometime playful, to many other images, names, stories and characters from contemporary popular culture. The Holmes canon is one example. Another is the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges who wrote about labyrinthine libraries. I am sure there are many that I have missed.
All of Eco's works of fiction are profound and popular at the same time. (His non-fiction is profound, but not so popular.) All of them repay several readings and re-readings. This, his first novel, and probably the one most widely read, is certainly no exception to that rule.
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