The Name of the Rose

[Katri]

It's a pity that not all the English translations have the appendix. It seems to me from comparing different copies that all the Finnish editions have the Latin appendix, though not the postscript.

But those who feel frustrated with the Latin, you're not missing out on anything essential by not understanding the passages. They add some extra flavour, which of course would be nice to have, but all the important things are also explained in non-Latin. :-)

[Robbie]

Meghan wrote: "I've always heard this was The Da Vinci Code before there as a Da Vinci Code; however, I'm not seeing the similarities. (I've read Foucault's Pendulum and that one IS the Da..."

Meghan: I totally agree with the The Pillars of the Earth comparison--I was just about ready to post that, too. Oh, I also agree about Angels and Demons.

This book has started a little slow for me, but so did Pillars of the Earth, and I ended up liking that one.

[Robbie]

Karina wrote: "I feel stupid asking this, but in the intro of the book, is Eco writing about himself, or is he explaining something to come in his novel? After the first time reading the intro, I came to the conc..."

I was thinking that the narrator of the story was who discovered the transcript. In other words, I thought the intro was part of the fiction. So, there was a fictional discoverer of the transcript who is now translating Edso's story to us.

[Robbie]

Meghan wrote: "Oh Katri, you are so lucky for those translations! I'm quite jealous :) My book had nothing and so it was REALLY hard (I hate it when I don't know what I'm reading). Some of it I could garner from ..."

When there are words I can't figure out, it makes me feel like I'm in 1st or 2nd grade again, and I just skip the ones I don't know. I'll have to look and see if I have the translations in my copy.

[Jessica]

There were a lot of words in the book I had to look up as well and some weren't even in the dictionary. I also had trouble keeping all the characters straight. I was wondering if we could create our own "Reader Guide" with things like a Character list, vocabulary, background history etc. In a book club where you meet in person, I feel like people ask more questions like "Now who is that guy again?" We do a great job talking about themes and ideas about the book but it would be really helpful to me to have more discussion about the details to help me read the more challenging books like this one. What does everyone else think?

[Kristi]

How do you propose doing this Jessica? Would this guide have to be a separate spreadsheet or document, or would it be within this discussion?

I've looked for some character lists online, but I've found that those lists give too much info. For example, it might tell if someone dies or not.

Regarding the vocabulary--I've been carrying a dictionary with me while reading this book, or making a list on my bookmark of words to look up. There are a lot of words in Latin that you probably won't be able to find.

I'm still struggling with the religious history, more than anything.

[El]

There are a few companion books to Name of the Rose floating around that might be beneficial. My boyfriend just picked one up from the library this past weekend - he hasn't read the novel, but might now because I keep raving about it. I haven't had a chance to flip through the companion book he checked out, but it looks like it covers a lot of the religious history and other details that are easy to miss.

As far as the characters, I generally write notes in a notebook while reading anyway, so I did that here to keep everyone straight in my mind.

[Katri]

Yeah, I definitely had trouble keeping all the characters straight in my head, too. In the first half of the book we keep on meeting new people, then we go onto something else and don't meet that person for a while and then they suddenly come up in the discussion and you sit there wondering if they were the librarian or the glassmaker or the strange guy who talks in many languages or what... It's not such a bad idea to put together a list like that, though I'm not sure what would be the best way to do that. At least we'd have to make sure no character descriptions list plot points at all so we don't give away who gets killed etc.

How many people are finished with the book already? I would love to start discussing it in more detail some time soon, but if almost everyone's still reading, then there's not much of a point - then everyone will just have to start avoiding the thread in order to avoid spoilers.

[Jessica]

The best way for me to keep characters straight is a reminder of how the author introduced them. (For example Adso is William's sidekick is enough for me and it doesn't have any plot points in it). That way you can associate all the events around that character as you read farther in the book without it giving anything away. Writing them down as you go is a good idea, but the problem that I have with that is sometimes the list gets long or you write down minor characters that never appear again.

I was thinking that there could just be another topic or even within this discussion that people post characters as they read along so whenever someone else comes to this thread they have a great Reader's Guide that is still a work in progress.

I have been looking up words in the dictionary but I came across one word that wasn't in my dictionary. Does anyone know what "hypotyposis" means (it's on page 73 of my edition)?

I am having a hard time keeping the history straight. I looked up some things on wikipedia but it didn't help much. Were there 2 popes during the Holy Roman Empire? If so, why? And what is the difference between the monk orders that they keep talking about? Is Adso a Benedictine monk and is the monastary they are at Benedictine as well? What order does William belong to?

[Katri]

Jessica wrote: "Were there 2 popes during the Holy Roman Empire? If so, why? And what is the difference between the monk orders that they keep talking about? Is Adso a Benedictine monk and is the monastary they are at Benedictine as well? What order does William belong to?"

I thought the book explained most of the confusing history stuff itself as it went on - I don't know much about popes and monasteries of the late Middle Ages either, but I feel I came out of the reading knowing a lot more about them. But it definitely can be confusing at first because it's not the most typical history any of us are taught at schools. From what I remember, there were a lot of power battles within the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, and the two Popes thing has to do with that - two people both wanted the position because it was so immensely powerful and when one went to Avignon rather than staying in Rome (I forget why), another took power in Rome... I don't really know too much about it so someone who knows better is the most welcome to set us all straight, but I think I understand it a bit better in my head than I can explain. :-) But I can try to do a bit more research and tell you if nobody comes around soon who can explain it better.

I'm not sure what a huge difference there is between the monk orders, but then again I'm not sure it matters that much either - the point is more that people make huge differences and arguments over relative trivialities instead of celebrating what's common for them and working together. I think William is a Fransiscan and that Adso and the monastery are Benedictine, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong - it's already been a couple of weeks since I finished the book, and there was a lot of info to keep straight!

It's interesting that a lot of you people are saying there are difficult words you don't know and that aren't even in the dictionary, whereas I had no such experience (outside the Latin words, of course). The difference is probably in the translation, I guess the Finnish translator made more effort to translate the words into something that is immediately understandable in Finnish. Or then I've got a better vocabulary than I realise. But I think there may be a language difference - in Finnish, especially in the 19th century scholars tried to come up with descriptive Finnish terms for all the fancy foreign scholarly terms, so they probably exist in our language, whereas in English those matters have been discussed in Latin- or Greek-derivative terms and then if you don't know the subject (which most of us nowadays don't!) and don't know Latin or Greek it can be hard to understand.

[El]

Katri wrote: "From what I remember, there were a lot of power battles within the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, and the two Popes thing has to do with that - two people both wanted the position because it was so immensely powerful and when one went to Avignon rather than staying in Rome (I forget why), another took power in Rome... I don't really know too much about it so someone who knows better is the most welcome to set us all straight, but I think I understand it a bit better in my head than I can explain. :-) But I can try to do a bit more research and tell you if nobody comes around soon who can explain it better."

That about sums it up, I think. Good job. :)

I believe there are four monastic orders: Franciscan (William), Benedictine (monastery), Cistercian and Dominican.

Adso was a novice at the telling of this story, so he is not of any order at this time. Basically he was an apprentice and was there only to learn.

[El]

I found this on Wikipedia that might help a little with the issue of the two popes during the Holy Roman Empire - it's basically what Katri was saying, but in more detail.

The period in which antipopes were most numerous was during the struggles between the popes and the Holy Roman Emperors of the 11th and 12th centuries. The emperors frequently imposed their own nominees to further their own causes. The popes, likewise, sometimes sponsored rival imperial claimants (antikings) in Germany to overcome a particular emperor.

The Great Western Schism – which began in 1378, when the French cardinals, claiming that the election of Pope Urban VI was invalid, elected Clement VII as Pope – led to two, and eventually three, rival lines of claimants to papacy: the Roman line, the Avignon line (Clement VII took up residence in Avignon, France), and the Pisan line. The last-mentioned line was named after the town of Pisa, Italy, where the council that elected Alexander V as a third claimant was held. To end the schism, in May 1415, the Council of Constance deposed John XXIII of the Pisan line, whose claim to legitimacy was based on a council's choice. Pope Gregory XII of the Roman line resigned in July 1415. In 1417, the Council also formally deposed Benedict XIII of the Avignon line, but he refused to resign. Afterwards, Pope Martin V was elected and was accepted everywhere except in the small and rapidly diminishing area that remained faithful to Benedict XIII. The scandal of the Great Schism created anti-papal sentiment, and fed into the Protestant Reformation at the turn of the 16th century.

So as usual, it's all politics. The pope went to Avignon, which then left Rome without a pope, so essentially they made up another pope - more commonly referred to as the antipope. (Granted, the second paragraph regarding the Great Schism takes place in history later than the plot in the book, but one can see what Eco was leading up to at times.)


Also, "hypotyposis" means: n. 1. (Rhet.) A vivid, picturesque description of scenes or events.





The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages is one of the companion books my boyfriend picked up from the library this weekend. I flipped through it, and it looks to be pretty helpful as far as understanding and keeping track of the real-life characters he mentions (Roger Bacon, William of Occam, etc.). He also picked up Postscript to the Name of the Rose, but I understand most copies of The Name of the Rose automatically have that included now. The edition I wrote was from back in the day and didn't have the extra goodies.

[Jessica]

Thanks so much for your help El!

[Kristi]

Finally finished this book! I guess I'm still working on the post-script, but if feels good to check this one off the list. It took me over a month to read, that's pretty unusual. I did like it, but I'm only giving it three stars for now. I think I'll read it again in a few years, because I've been told that a second reading makes you understand and appreciate the story more. I'll write some more comments on the book later, but I just wanted to celebrate my finishing of it!

[Katri]

Yay! I think I'll post some discussion questions soon, since now we've got at least some people around who've read the whole book, and we're already into the next month so it would be good to be able to start discussing the book as a whole. :)

I imagine that for many people it might be a book they'll appreciate more on a second reading, because there really is quite a lot to take in, and the first time it might feel too heavy and confusing. I didn't feel that way, but I could easily see it being like that.

[Robbie]

I just finished the book last night. One thing I thought was interesting from the postscript was how the author said his first draft was criticized for being dense and slow-going in the first 100 pages or so. He said he decided to keep it that way, because it would be similar to William and Adso needing to adjust their pace when they visited the monastery, and it also gave the feeling of doing a pennance.

That interestingness aside, I thought this was a real chore to get through, and the whole mystery thing turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps that was a technique to help us understand how Adso felt, and perhaps how William felt as well.

I think the fact that people compared this book to The DaVinci Code set me up for some of that disappointment. I think I would have enjoyed reading a story similar to The DaVinci Code, but with better writing.

[Meghan]

Robbie - I would say Foucault's Pendulum (which I don't recommend if you found Rose tedious) is the DaVinci Code but better written. This is more Angels and Demons with science vs religion. (Kind of makes you think if Brown wasn't heavily influenced by Eco since he's written so many similar books to Eco.)

[Katri]

I'm glad more of you are starting to have finished the book! I feel like a bit of a weirdo for gulping it down in one week while the rest are finding it so difficult, but well, it is a heavy and unusual book and people are going to have very different responses to it. :-) Sorry I haven't been back sooner with the discussion questions I had in mind, a combination of being busy and being sick...

But I'll start with one questions (or a few variations of the same question) in response to Robbie's post. How did you all feel about the solution of the mystery? Was it predictable? Surprising? Were you disappointed or did you find meaning in it? Often stories that build up a huge mystery are letdowns in the end because it's so difficult to create a solution to the mystery that actually answers all the expectations created during the story. Did you feel that way with this book, or were you happy with the way the mystery turned out?

I'll be back with my own answer on another day, as I'm rather tired now. But feel free to include spoilery information in your answers - as long as you put spoiler warnings there first! (Write SPOILER before the spoilery part, and preferably leave several empty lines, especially if it's something big like the identity of the murderer.)

[Meghan]

While I guessed the ending, I wouldn't say it was predictable (for me). I thought it was a good mental game throughout the story. With the "bigness" of the themes in this story I don't think any ending would have been "satifactory" because he was constrained by history. (I mean satisfactory in the sense of having things all wrapped up nice and neat.) But I thought the ending was appropriate and true to the characters, so that satisfied me.

[Emilyandherlittlepinknotes]

Hi I ended up in this really interesting discussion, being italian I had to read "The Name of the Rose" when I was 18 (high school). I enjoyed it a lot and I was glad for the assignment (later I watched the movie, I highly recommend it). Eco in Italy is regarded as a medievalist, an intellectual, an academic, most italians probably read Dan Brown but would never pick up a book by Eco.
I wouldn't put Brown and Eco in the same league, "The Name of the Rose" is not an easy read (in italian) I never read the english version so I can't judge if it somehow simplifies the narration.

[Katri]

At least my Finnish translation definitely doesn't seem to have simplified the narration, and judging from how few people in the discussion finished the book, the English probably hasn't either. I agree that Eco and Dan Brown don't belong to the same category at all. I think some people are tempted to group them together because both deal with some similar cultural historical subjects and have a mystery form of the plot, but to just say that The Name of the Rose is a more academic Da Vinci Code or something completely misses out on Eco's unique style and the amazing amount of information and culture in Eco's work. And I actually enjoyed Da Vinci Code, I'm not criticizing it by saying this, but it's a completely different kind of book.

I forgot to return to answer my own question earlier. I felt a bit mixed about the solution to the mystery, because well, I had thought the "murderer" to be too obvious a choice to really be the murderer... After all, the murderer should be the one you don't guess at all. Then again, if I dismiss him outright because it seems too obvious, then doesn't that make him much less obvious? Anyway, it seems to me that Eco was more intent on the meaning of the solution - what it would mean that someone would murder and destroy in order to keep people from finding a book that is positive about laughter - than on constructing an elaborate Christie-like mystery. And then again, there was a twist after all, since the murderer hadn't directly murdered anybody but had just created the right circumstances let the thirst for knowledge and the jealous passions among the monks do the work for him. It was kind of awesome. I absolutely loved the apocalyptic chaos that followed the discovery of the murderer.

[Meghan]

I thought for any of you who enjoyed this book, may want to read this interview with Eco. He has a new exhibit at the Louvre now.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/z...

[Jessica]

Great article! Every time I think of lists (and how I love them!) I think of this book.