Question

Summary of the novel the name of the rose by umberto eco

Answer 1

The Name of the Rose, novel by Umberto Eco, published in Italian as Il nome della rosa in 1980. Although the work stands on its own as a murder mystery, it is more accurately seen as a questioning of the meaning of “truth” from theological, philosophical, scholarly, and historical perspectives.With a narrative apparatus as complex as it is beautiful, Eco’s work gives the reader both a clear defense of the study of signs and an intricate detective story. Both facets are framed by the unfinished story, a prenarrative, of a scholar who finds in a number of manuscripts a story worth telling. Perhaps because the space this prenarrative is given is so slight compared to the density of what is to follow or perhaps because of the tone of the scholar, these first few pages remain with the reader as the text goes back to the source of the manuscripts in the early fourteenth century. A young Benedictine novice, Adso of Melk, tells of his travels with a learned Franciscan, William of Baskerville, to a troubled Benedictine monastery. This monastery, a cruel enclosed arena of conflicts and secrets, is ruled by books. The Benedictines who inhabit it live for books. As, one by one, six of them are murdered, William of Baskerville searches for the truth of their internal mute warfare by finding and reading the signs of jealousy, desire, and fear. Highly rational, Baskerville meets his nemesis in Jorge of Burgos, a doctrinaire blind monk determined to destroy heresy at any cost.The Name of the Rose asks its readers to share Baskerville’s task of interpretation, to respect the polyphony of signs, to slow down before deciding upon meaning, and to doubt anything that promises an end to the pursuit of meaning. In this way, Eco opens up the wonder of interpretation itself.