Il nome della Rosa (“The Name of the Rose”) is a book that has become a debut in the literary field of the professor of Bologna University for Semiotics, U. Eco. The novel was first published in nineteen eighty in the original language (Italian). The next work of the author, “The Foucault Pendulum”, was an equally successful bestseller and finally introduced the author to the world of great literature. But in this article we will retell the summary of “The Name of the Rose”. There are two versions of the origin of the name of the novel. The historian Umberto Eco refers us to the era of disputes between nominalists and realists who debated what would remain in the name of the rose if the flower itself disappeared. But also the title of the novel causes an allusion with the plot's love line. Having lost his beloved, the hero Adson cannot even cry over her name, because he does not know him.
Novel - “Matryoshka”
The work “The Name of the Rose” is very complex, multifaceted. The author, from the very foreword, confronts the reader with the possibility that everything he reads about in this book will turn out to be a historical fake. To a certain translator in Prague in 1968 fall "Notes of the father of Adson Melksky." This is a book in French published in the mid-nineteenth century. But it is also a retelling of the Latin text of the seventeenth century, which, in turn, is the publication of a manuscript of the late fourteenth century. The manuscript was created by a monk from Melk. Historical research about the personality of the medieval author of the notes, as well as the scribes of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, did not give any results. Thus, the author of the novel filigree crosses out the summary from the reliable historical events of his work. "The name of the rose" is replete with documentary errors. And for this novel is criticized by academic historians. But what events do we need to know in order to understand the intricacies of the plot?
The historical context in which the novel takes place (summary)
The “Name of the Rose” sends us in the month of November one thousand three hundred and twenty-seventh. At that time, Western Europe was shaken by church discord. The papal curia is in the "Avignon captivity", under the heel of the French king. John the Twenty-Second is fighting on two fronts. On the one hand, he confronts the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Fourth of Bavaria, and on the other, he fights against his own servants of the Church. Francis of Assisi, who laid the foundation for the monastic order of the Lesser Brothers, advocated absolute poverty. He called for the renunciation of worldly riches in order to follow Christ. After the death of Francis, the papal curia mired in luxury decided to send his disciples and followers to the walls of the monasteries. This split the ranks of the members of the order. From it stood out the Franciscans-spiritualists, who continued to stand on the positions of apostolic poverty. Dad declared them heretics, and persecution began. The emperor took advantage of this for his struggle for investiture, and supported the spirituals. Thus, they become a significant political force. As a result, the parties entered into negotiations. A Franciscan-backed delegation and representatives of the Pope were to meet in an unnamed monastery on the borders of Savoy, Piedmont, and Liguria. In this monastery, the main events of the novel unfold. Recall that the discussion about the poverty of Christ and His Church is only a screen behind which tense political intrigues are hidden.
Historical detective
An erudite reader will surely catch the connection between Eco’s novel and Conan Doyle’s short stories. To do this, just find out its summary. “The Name of the Rose” appears before us as the most thorough notes of Adson. An allusion about Dr. Watson was immediately born, who described in detail the investigations of his friend Sherlock Holmes. Of course, both heroes of the novel are monks. Wilhelm of Baskervilsky, whose small homeland makes us remember the story of Conan Doyle about an ominous dog in the heathlands, came to the Benedictine monastery on behalf of the emperor to prepare a meeting of spiritualists with representatives of the papal curia. But as soon as he and the novice Adson Melksky approached the monastery, events began to unfold so rapidly that they carried the debate about the poverty of the apostles and the Church into the background. The novel takes place in the period of one week. The mysterious killings that follow one after the other keep the reader in suspense. Wilhelm, a diplomat, a brilliant theologian, and, as his dialogue with Bernard Guy, a former inquisitor, volunteered to find the culprit of all these deaths. “The Name of the Rose” is a detective novel by its genre.
How a diplomat becomes an investigator
In the Benedictine monastery, where the meeting of the two delegations was to take place, the Franciscan Wilhelm of Baskerville and the novice Adson Melksky arrive a few days before the start of the dispute. In its course, the parties were to express their arguments regarding the poverty of the Church as the heiress of Christ and discuss the possibility of the arrival of the Spiritual General Mikhail Tsesensky in Avignon to the papal throne. But only approaching the gates of the monastery, the main characters meet the monks who ran out in search of an escaped mare. Here Wilhelm surprises everyone with his “deductive method” (another Umberto Eco reference to Conan Doyle), describing the horse and indicating the location of the animal. The abbot of the monastery, Abbon, struck by the deep mind of the Franciscan, asks him to deal with the case of a strange death that happened within the walls of the monastery. At the bottom of the cliff, Adelme’s body was found. It looked like he was thrown from a window hanging over the abyss of the tower, called the Temple. Abbon hints that he knows something about the circumstances of the death of the draftsman Adelm, but he is bound by a vow of the mystery of confession. But he gives Wilhelm the opportunity to investigate and interrogate all the monks in order to identify the killer.
Temple
Abbon allowed the investigator to examine all corners of the monastery, except the library. She occupied the third, upper floor of the Temple - a giant tower. The library was famous as the largest book depository in Europe. She was built like a maze. Only the librarian Malachi and his assistant Berengar had access to it. The second floor of the Temple was occupied by a scriptorium where scribes and illustrators worked, one of which was the late Adelm. After conducting a deductive analysis, Wilhelm came to the conclusion that no one had killed the draftsman, but he himself jumped from the high monastery wall, and his body was moved by a landslide under the walls of the Temple. But this does not end the novel and its summary. The "Name of the Rose" keeps the reader in constant tension. The next morning, another corpse was discovered. It was difficult to call it suicide: the body of the follower of the teachings of Aristotle, Venantius stuck out from a barrel of pig blood (Christmas was approaching, and the monks were slaughtering cattle for making sausages). The murdered also worked in a scriptorium. And this made Wilhelm pay more attention to the mysterious library. The riddle of the maze began to interest him after the rebuff of Malachi. He single-handedly decided whether to provide the book to the monk who requested it, referring to the fact that the repository contains many heretical and pagan manuscripts.
Scriptorium
Not being admitted to the library, which will become the center of the intrigue of the novel "The Name of the Rose", the heroes Wilhelm and Adson spend a lot of time on the second floor of the Temple. Talking with the young copyist Bentsiy, the investigator finds out that in the scriptorium two parties are silently, but nevertheless, fiercely opposing each other. Young monks are always ready to laugh, while older monks consider fun to be an unacceptable sin. The leader of this party is the blind monk Jorge, who is known as the holy righteous. He is overwhelmed by the eschatological expectations of the coming of the Antichrist and the end of time. But the draftsman Adelme so skillfully portrayed the bestiary beasts that his comrades could not help laughing. Bentius let slip that two days before the death of the illustrator, the silent confrontation in the scriptorium turned into a verbal skirmish. It was about the admissibility of the image of the ridiculous in theological texts. Umberto Eco uses this discussion to open the veil of secrecy: a book is kept in the library that can solve the dispute in favor of the champions of fun. Berenger let slip about the existence of labor, which was associated with the words "the border of Africa."
Deaths connected by one logical thread
“The Name of the Rose” is a postmodern novel. The author in the image of William of Baskervilles subtly parodies Sherlock Holmes. But, unlike the London detective, the medieval investigator does not keep pace with the events. He cannot prevent crime, and the killings follow one by one. And in this we see a hint of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians". But all these killings, one way or another, are associated with a mysterious book. Wilhelm learns the details of Adelm's suicide. Berengar inclined him to a Sodomite connection, promising for this a certain service, which he could perform as an assistant librarian. But the draftsman could not stand the gravity of sin and ran to confess. And since the adversary was the adamant Jorge, Adelme could not lighten his soul, and in desperation he took his own life. It did not work to interrogate Berengar: he disappeared. Feeling that all the events in the scriptorium are connected with the book, Wilhelm and Adson enter the Temple at night, using the underground passage, which they learned about, having looked after the assistant librarian. But the library turned out to be a complex maze. The heroes barely found a way out of it, having experienced the effects of all kinds of traps: mirrors, lamps with mind-buttering oil, etc. The missing Berengar was found dead in the bathhouse. The monastery doctor Severin shows William strange black marks on the fingers and tongue of the deceased. The same were discovered earlier in Venantius. Severin also said that he had lost a vial with a very toxic substance.
Big politics
With the arrival of two delegations in the monastery in parallel with the detective story, the “political” line of the plot of the book “Name of the Rose” begins to develop. The novel is full of historical flaws. So, inquisitor Bernard Guy, having arrived with a diplomatic mission, begins to investigate not heretical errors, but criminal offenses - murders in the walls of the monastery. The author of the novel immerses the reader in the vicissitudes of theological disputes. Meanwhile, Wilhelm and Adson re-enter the library and study the plan of the maze. They also find the "frontier of Africa" - a tightly locked secret room. Meanwhile, Bernard Guy, uncharacteristic of himself, judging by historical sources, is investigating the killings by methods. He arrests and accuses the assistant doctor, former Dolchanin Baltazar, and the beggar girl, who came to the monastery to sell her body for scraps from the refectory, for witchcraft. The scholarly dispute between the representatives of the curia and the spirituals turns into a trivial fight. But the author of the novel again takes the reader away from the plane of theology into the exciting genre of the detective.
Murder weapon
While William watched the fight, Severin came. He said that he had found a strange book in his infirmary. Naturally, this is the one that Berengar took out of the library, since his body was found in a bathhouse near the hospital. But Wilhelm cannot go away, and after a while everyone is shocked by the news of the death of the doctor. Severin's skull was broken, and at the crime scene, Kelar Remigius was captured. He claims to have found the doctor already dead. But Bentius, a very ingenious young monk, told Wilhelm that he had rushed to the infirmary first, and then he kept an eye on the incoming people. He is sure that the librarian of Malachi was here and was hiding somewhere, and then mixed with the crowd. Realizing that the killer of the doctor had not yet managed to take out the book brought here by Berengar, Wilhelm looks through all the notebooks in the infirmary. But he overlooks that several manuscript texts can be stitched into one volume. Therefore, the book gets a more discerning Bentz. The novel "Name of the Rose" is not in vain that readers' reviews are called very multifaceted. The plot again brings the reader to the plane of big politics. It turns out that Bernard Guy arrived at the monastery with the secret purpose of disrupting the negotiations. To do this, he took advantage of the murders that befell the monastery. He accuses the crimes of the former Dolchinian, arguing that Balthazar shares the heretical views of the spirituals. Thus, and all of them are part of the guilt.
The solution to the mystery of the mysterious book and a series of murders
Bentius gave the volume of Malachi without even opening it, since he was offered to take the post of assistant librarian. And that saved his life. Because the pages of the book were saturated with poison. Malachi felt his action on himself - he died in convulsions right during the Mass. His tongue and fingertips were black. But here Abbon calls to William and firmly announces that he must leave the monastery the next morning. The abbot is convinced that the cause of the killings was the settlement of accounts between husbands. But the Franciscan investigator monk is not going to give up. After all, he had already come close to solving the riddle. He unraveled the key that opens the Africa Reach room. And on the sixth night of their stay in the monastery, Wilhelm and Adson again enter the library. “The Name of the Rose” is a Umberto Eco novel, the narrative of which either flows slowly, like a calm river, or develops rapidly, like a thriller. In the secret room of uninvited guests, blind Jorge is already waiting. In his hands is the same book - the only lost copy of Aristotle's work “On Laughter”, the second part of “Poetics”. This "gray cardinal", who kept everyone under his command, including the abbot, while still seeing, saturate the pages of the book he hated with poison so that no one could read it. Aristotle enjoyed great reverence among theologians in the Middle Ages. Jorge was afraid that if laughter was confirmed by such authority, then the whole system of his values, which he regarded as solely Christian, would collapse. For the sake of this, he lured the abbot into a stone trap and broke the mechanism that unlocked the door. The blind monk invites William to read a book. But when he learns that the secret of poison-soaked sheets is known to him, he begins to absorb the sheets himself. Wilhelm tries to take the book from the old man, but he, perfectly guided in the maze, runs away. And when it is overtaken, a lamp pulls out and throws it into the rows of books. Spilled oil immediately covers the parchments with fire. William and Adson miraculously escape from the scene of the fire. The flame from the Temple is transferred to other buildings. Three days later, only the smoking ruins remain on the site of the richest monastery.
Is there morality in a postmodern essay?
Humor, allusions and references to other works of literature, a detective story superimposed on the historical context of the beginning of the fourteenth century - these are not all the “tricks” with which the name of the Rose entices the reader. An analysis of this work suggests that there is a deep meaning behind visible entertainment. The protagonist is not at all William of Canterbury, much less the modest author of the notes, Adson. This is the Word that some are trying to bring out and drown out others. The problem of inner freedom is raised by the author and rethought. A kaleidoscope of quotations of famous works on the pages of the novel more than once makes an erudite reader smile. But along with witty syllogisms, we also encounter a more important problem. This idea of tolerance, the ability to respect the universal world of another person. The issue of freedom of speech, truth, which should be “proclaimed from the roof” opposes the idea of being right as the last resort, trying to impose one’s point of view not by conviction, but by force. Nowadays, when ISIS atrocities proclaim European values an unacceptable heresy, this novel seems even more relevant.
“Marginal notes of the Name of the Rose”
After the publication of the novel in a matter of months, it became a bestseller. Readers simply flunked the author of The Name of the Rose with letters asking questions about the book. Therefore, in the nineteen eighty-third year, U. Eco allowed the curious into his "creative laboratory." "Margin Name" margin notes "are written witty and amusing. In them, the best-selling author reveals the secrets of a successful novel. Six years after the publication of the novel, "The Name of the Rose" was taken to film. Director Jean-Jacques Annotte involved famous actors in the filming. Sean Connery skillfully played the role of William of Baskerville. A young but very talented actor Christian Slater reincarnated as Adson. The film was a great success at the box office, justified the money invested in it and won numerous awards at film contests. But Eco himself was very dissatisfied with such a film adaptation. He believed that the screenwriter greatly simplified his work, making it a product of mass culture. Since then, he has refused all directors asking for the opportunity to film his works.