S8-1 The Name of the Rose - Discussion Questions

Yeah, this door would take a long time to describe.  

Welcome to the Name of the Rose discussion! Buckle up your saddles, you're in for a wild ride. 

1a. Eco has described the first 100 pages of the novel as a “penitential obstacle”; in terms of Dante, if you endure the purgatory of the first day (if you get all the way up Mount Purgatorio), you’ll enter Paradise.  Well, not really.  But you will be ready for the rest of the book.  He’s training you as a reader. Did you feel that 100 pages like the purgatory he planed? 

1b.Adso is with William because his father wants him kept out of trouble and out of the way of the fighting, and also (unstated) so that Adso doesn’t become a hostage.  Adso’s father is nobleman fighting for the emperor; therefore, our naive and earnest narrator would be a valuable tool in the hands of his father’s enemies. Adso is represented as an old man recalling events of many years ago. Does he seem to be a reliable narrator? Does Eco ever give us cause to doubt Adso's memory or frankness? 

2. For the children of nobility, career options were limited.  Daughters were either married off to cement political alliances or allowed to go into convent.  Sons:   The eldest son inherited the father’s land and social standing.  The second son usually went into the military.  This had the practical effect of keeping a spare son on hand and trained to take Dad’s place if something happened to the eldest.  Usually third, fourth, fifth sons went into the Church, either to be monks or ordained as priests and given benefices, bishoprics, etc.  How does this arrangement lead to corruption, as the wealthy and powerful placed their spare kids in influential positions in the Church hierarchy? Does Adso as a young Dominican cut along, or against that tradition? 

3. The Glosses

Before every section of the day, we have a gloss that tells us what’s going to happen.  This is not a bug; it’s a feature.

Medieval manuscripts are big on glosses.  The word “gloss,” which today implies deception (as in, “the Press Secretary glossed over the implications of the meeting”) in the Middle Ages was meant for clarification and commentary.  Sometimes the glossing would overwhelm the base text.

There’s a rich tradition of commenting in the margins (glossing) of medieval manuscripts — by their producers and by readers.  There’s also the tradition of decoration — rubrication (colored capitals), illumination (decoration in silver and gold), marginalia, illustrations.  The decoration had a two-fold purpose: 1) books were expensive and precious.  In a monastery where learning is devoted to the glory of God, only the best will do; therefore, using decoration and illumination is appropriate. 2) Much of the decoration: chapter headings, colored capitals, etc.  helped readers find and keep their place. Any thoughts on the books or process of the time? 

4. Day 1 

William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk reach the abbey and immediately notice the towering Aedificium ("huge building") with its large windows and unusual form, made up of complex interrelated geometrical spaces. There's a runaway horse, William figures out the mystery. At the Abby the Abbot tells William that he needs him to figure out the murder of Adelmo. He can interview the monks, but can't go into the library. They meet the weirdo Salvatore. Adso spends about a hundred pages describing the door to the church. William and Adso find old Ubertino of Casale praying. Ubertino is a Spiritual (a Franciscan sect) monk who found refuge from the Church's persecution in the abbey. A papal bull (edict) condemned the Spirituals as heretics, commanding that they should be hunted and then burned at the stake. Ubertino says Salvatore is ok, but there is something weird going on in the Abby and William should be careful. They meet Severinus, Malachai, Berengar and Jorge (who starts his rants about laughter in his first appearance). Through keen observation, William figures out the secret entrance to the library...through the monk's underground cemetery.

Discuss amongst yourselves.  

OH my gosh that is just part 1 of day one and it took forever to summarize (and didn't even cover everything). This book is so full of events and information. Even the summaries are going to be exhausting. Ok, gonna change tactics.

Day Two - Look! Here's what the library looked like. Isn't that neat? 

• 5. Because some passages are untranslated, it’s easy to forget that all the monks are speaking Latin.  How do we know?  When Salvatore speaks in his vernacular mishmash, Adso doesn’t quite understand everything he says; the monks speak disparagingly about the unlearned who don’t speak Latin, and Latin is the true universal language, the medium that allows William, and Englishman, Adso, a German, and the other monks drawn from across the world to speak to each other.  Okay: so why is the Latin left untranslated in our text? Anyone else go on duolingo and learn basic latin, then give up two days later? 
• 6. What do you make of the library?  Is its primary purpose to safeguard information or to disseminate it?  Which of the monks do you agree with? 
• 7. The labyrinth symbolizes a fanatical commitment to keep the library's secret hidden. When William and Adso try to enter the labyrinth, they are overwhelmed by its deliberate confusion. The signs are too numerous to enumerate and too confusing to explain. Even William is confounded when he realizes, "Knowledge is used to conceal, rather than to enlighten ... A perverse mind presides over the holy defense of the library." What did you think about their experience in the library?

8. Day 3

Ok, that still took a while, but I think we are getting somewhere now...quick answer phase:

• Who do you dislike the most, and why?  
• Who is creepier: Ubertino or Berengar? Jorge or Gui the Lawyer
• Do you think there’s a spiritual Jerusalem at the center of this labyrinth?
• How stupid do you have to be to be Salvatore? (I didn't write this, but it's funny...)
• Do William's many failures diminish his stature? Yes or no? 
• Is he truly a Great Detective, or just a parody of one? Great or Parody?

9. Days 4, 5, 6

This stuff that happens...not necessarily in order.

Berenger dies, the glasses are a big deal, Salvatore brings that black cat in for his spell, etc. Adso goes alone to the library, then finds that girl in the kitchen, and we get a few hundred pages describing that experience...

 In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco creates parallels between the sexual relationship of men and women, minor churchmen and wealth, and monks and books. Books are seen as the equivalent of adulterous or avaricious temptations, drawing monks in particular from their proper duties and attentions. This is particularly important because in this section of the book young Adso has his seduction of a nameless kitchen maid, which is his first sexual encounter. 

Thoughts on this? 

9a. Somewhere in here is the whole inquisition of the Cellarer and all that went along with it (and the despicable GUI lawyer). Can you explain the debate (on the fifth day) that is explored in this book about poverty and the relation of Jesus to possessions and material wealth?

10. “For those who lack eyes to see,” the blind man said. “The ways of the Antichrist are slow and tortuous. He arrives when we do not expect him: not because the calculation suggested by the apostle was mistaken, but because we have not learned the art.” Then he cried, in a very loud voice, his face turned toward the hall, making the ceiling of the scriptorium re-echo: “He is coming! Do not waste your last days laughing at little monsters with spotted skins and twisted tails! Do not squander the last seven days!” (1, p. 83)

The last judgement comes up...Adso has the vision or dream that leads to our hero, William, figuring everything out. What did you think about the order of events and what they led to? 

11. OH DAY 7 - what a day. 

Despite William’s assertion that there is no order in the universe, the murders have proceeded according to signs in the Book of Revelation.  It starts as “chance,” which is exploited by Jorge who realizes that William believes he’s found a pattern.  But that pattern doesn’t break with the big reveal: that there was no pattern. 

Day 1: Adelmo: fire and hail, ref. Revelation 8:7

Day 2: Venantius: vat of blood, ref. Revelation 8:8-9

Day 3: Berengar: water, ref. Rev. 8:10-11

Day 4: Severinus: killed by one-third of a globe, ref. Rev. 8:12-13

Day 5: Malachi: scorpions, ref. Rev. 9:5

Day 6: Abo: ref. Rev. 9:15 (he suffocates as the angels are loosed)

Day 7: Jorge and everyone else: ref. Rev. 9:17 (the fire is spread by horses with flaming manes)

In other words, Eco leaves open the door for interpretation; there may be an apocalyptic pattern, just as there may be an order in the world, even though we can’t see it.  It’s up to you to choose how to read it; it is, after all, an open text.

What did you think about the ending? How did you react to whom the 'murderer was?' 

Now for something different...

12. This strange book club discussion was brought to you, in part, by Walter or Roselle, New Jersey. His opinions are his own, and do not in any sense represent the members of ABBC2. 

                                           

This is what Walter thinks of The Name of the Rose:

Eco's writing is so infectious, lively, and likeable that I thought it appropriate to pen my review in his style.

1. In which I, as reader, feel used.

Yes, I'm almost certain Eco wrote this thing for the sole purpose of informing us of how knowledgeable he is of the finer points of monastic orders, book trivia, and medieval philosophy.

Knowing most would not put up with this crap for 500 pages, he wisely chose to interrupt his many digressions on poverty, heretics, whether or not Jesus laughed, Aristotle, architecture, etc, with an amateurish mystery plot. It's pedantry disguised as fiction. I've been used.

(13)2. In which the pace sucks.

Just when you thought it was getting interesting, just when the plot is getting meatier and it grabs your attention, here comes a dissertation or a long drawn description of doors, churches, parchments, beasts, characters that are totally irrelevant to the plot, and backstories that do nothing to shed light on the events. You must often wait a chapter or two to get back to the mystery that drove you to read this thing in the first place. Do yourself a favor and quit after he has solved his first "mystery" (page 25?).

(14)3. In which its heavy-handedness is offensive.

Lurk around bookworms long enough and you're bound to find some pompous pseudo intellectual enraptured by the rich, textured, yet subtle literary clues so artfully crafted into this piece: "You mean to tell me that Jorge De Burgos, the blind monk, is actually a nod to Jorge Luis Borges, the blind Argentinian writer? Whaaat?" So clever...

I'm sure the late Borges heard this, face-palmed, and then turned in his grave.

EDIT: I have been duly informed, perhaps by the type referenced above, that Borges was actually alive when this "work" was published. He died shortly thereafter...

(15)4. In which the plot fails to deliver.

Provided you made it as far as the end, all in hopes of finding a conclusion so stellar as to redeem the drudgery that preceded it, what one is most likely to find is disappointment. Most, by the time they get there, will already know who the culprit is, and given the setting and the tools the protagonists are carrying, what will happen in the final scene.

Is it a fantastic twist? A conspiracy centuries in the making? No. Just lunatic ravings akin to the ones that drove Eco to romanticize about love, lust, knowledge, etc...

agree with Walter or disagree with Walter?

Did we survive? Did this make sense? Should we just burn this whole entire discussion post and all the wisdom enclosed within it???

Resources: Daily Kos Book Club, Course Hero, Good Reads, Kim C. and Lindsay N.