Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose
"Naturally, a Manuscript"
Return to the Index of Study Pages
Return to ENG 510 Practical Criticism course syllabus
Mail comments or questions to Professor Earl Anderson
Topics
The title: aspects of the title Il noma della rosa
that need to be considered:
The connection of the title to the Latin hexameter at the end
of the novel (p. 502), and Eco's comments about this in
his Postscript to The Name of the Rose, pp. 1-2.
Eco's comments about the title in his Interpretation
and Overinterpretation, pp. 79-81, where he says that
he chose the title in order to "set the reader free" from
a mode of interpretation based upon the supposed intentions
of the author. The reader thus is free to draw relationships
between the book and other symbolic uses of a "rose."
Traditional literary uses of the "rose" are explored in:
Robert F. Fleissner, A Rose by Any Other Name: A Survey
of Literary Flora from Shakespeare to Eco. To what extent
are earlier associations of the rose relevant to our
understanding of The Name of the Rose?
The title is an allusion to Abelard's "Nulla rosa est"
(Postscript, p. 1), and relates to Abelard's and
Eco's thinking about language as a way of referring.
The "recovered manuscript" topos (pp. 1-5)
In "Naturally, a Manuscript," Eco develops a variant of
the "recovered manuscript" topos. In order to understand
what Eco is doing with this topos, we need to reconstruct it
by examining its use in the following texts (some of which
have a direct influence on Eco):
Cervantes' Don Quixote
Sir Walter Scott's Waverly novels
Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed ("Author's
Introduction")
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter"
Italo Calvino's The Nonexistent Knight
Paul Auster's City of Glass -- a version of
the "recovered manuscript" tradition later than Eco. Auster
refers explicitly to Cervantes' use of the tradition;
his theme of reconstructing a notebook was probably
inspired by Borges' "Pierre menard, Author of the Quixote,"
in Labyrinths, pp. 36-44 (p. 44).
Earlier examples of the "recovered manuscript" tradition:
The 4th century Greek Apocalypse of St. Paul is
represented by its author as having been discovered in a marble chest
by an unnamed man in Tarsus, "during the consulate of Theodosius
Augustus the Younger of Cynegius" (A.D. 388). As it
turns out, the unnamed man lived in the house that had
belonged to Paul of Tarsus. An angel appeared to the young
man three times in a dream, directing him to break into
the foundation of the house and publish what he found there.
The young man thought that it was a lying dream, and
ignored it until the third time. When he finally broke
into the foundation, he discovered a marble box containing
Paul's "Revelation", and the shoes he had worn during his
missionary career. Eventually, Paul's manuscript was sent to
Theodosius, who had a copy made and sent to Jerusalem.
Benoit's Roman de Troie: While Benoit was looking
in an armoire for a grammar book, in preparation for a
class that he had to teach, he instead found an old diary
written by Dictys, who had been a solider and scholar in Troy
at the time of the Trojan war. Benoit's Roman de Troie
is based on Dictys' diary, which deserves greater credibility than
Homer, because Dictys was an eye-witness to the fighting
at Troy. Homer was a great scholar, but he was born more than 100 years after Troy was burnt,
and thus deserves less credibility than Dictys.
Leon Baptista Alberti's allegorical drama, Philodoxeus
(1424), supposedly written by "Lepidus" (this fictive name
means `Pleasant,' `Witty'). Alberti claims to have discovered
this play in an old Roman codex. There was, in the Renaissance,
a lucrative market for ancient texts, and forgeries were common.
On August 16, 1968, I was handed a book written by a certain Abbe
Vallet, Le Manuscrit de Dom Adson de Melk, traduit en francais d'apres
l'edition de Dom J. Mabillon (1): [Gary Swanson comments] This opening sentence fulfills
the first of the qualities as suggested by P. Vielhauer in New
Testament Apocrypha, p. 583 for recognizing an Apocalypse when read:
"Pseudonymity. The Apocalyptist does not write under his own name, but
under that of one of the great personages of the past....He has not
sufficient authority of his own, as the writing prophets had.....
Together with pseudonumity, a fictitious antiquity is found as an element
in the style of the apocalyptic writer. In this case, it has to be made
clear why the book has just recently become known and not a long time
ago" (583). Our fictive editor makes no attempt to answer this question,
choosing instead the topos of the recovered/lost manuscript form
to clear away the possibility of an answer. "But what if I had Snoopy
say it?" Eco asks in his postscript. "If, that is, 'It was a beautiful
morning...' were said by someone capable of saying it...A mask: that was
what I needed.
"I set about reading or rereading medieval chroniclers, to acquire their
rhythm and their innocence. They would speak for me, and I would be
freed from suspicion" (511)
"I prepare to leave on this parchment my testimony as to the wondrous
and terrible events that I happened to observe in my youth."(11) The
second quality Vielhauer attributes to an Apocalypse is "Account of the
Vision" (ibid). "The vision itself is a picture: either a picture which
represents the occurences themselves directly, or a picture which
portrays them indirectly, in the form of symbols and allegories.
"In the last mentioned instance, an explanation is essential....given by
a mediator...[g]enerally an interpreting angel" (583). Vielhauer goes on
to say that often the text takes the form of allegory. Adso's gloss on
the church of the abbey is partly of this form (pp. 40-5). As on page
45, he remarks: "It was at this point I realized the vision was speaking
precisely of what was happening in the abbey..." Adso's vision is an
apocalyptic one, manifested in the doorway, and apocalypses return again
and again to the fore throughout the novel, variously interpreted by
William, Ubertino, Alinardo, and others.
"Perhaps, to make more comprehensible the events in which I found
myself involved, I should recall what was happening in those last years
of the century." (12)The third quality is that of "Surveys of History
in Future Form," that is, "...apocalyptic writers frequently present the
history of the past right up to their own present time...[t]his is always
followed by a prediction of the End..." (584-5) Eco has his Adso, in the
guise of placing the events of the abbey in their historical context (and
for the reader Eco sneaks this in in the form of Adso's "didactic tone,
because this was the style of the medieval chronicler, eager to introduce
encyclopedic notions ever time something was mentioned" (519-520)), bring
us up to speed on what precedes 1327, then to hint darkly at what follows
it: "But this inability of mine to see is perhaps the effect of the
shadow that the great darkness, as it approaches, is casting on the aged
world" (500).
monastery library of Melk (p. 2) [comments by Marilyn Sutton]: A significant element in The Name of the Rose is the monastic library, a
labyrinth with carefully restricted access. An Aristotle manuscript lies at
the heart of the conflict, necessitating three murders.
According to the "Plan of Gall," a ninth century Benedictine architectural
plan, the monastic library was located in a corner of the church directly
above the scriptorium.
The first allusion to a library in The Name of the Rose is the narrator's
failure to locate Adso's manuscript in the Melk monastery library. This is reminiscent of Borges' "wandering scholar" theme in "Tlon,
Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." The second reference is to the description of a
labyrinth, presumable the library, in the Vallet manuscript. The
third library reference is with regard to Adso's literary style, stilted and
limited because of his lack of familiarity with local language, as he was
"bound to the pages housed in the library" (Eco, p. 4).
A hodge-podge of information about Benedictine libraries and their use:
The vow of poverty forbade individual monks from owning books
(Christ, 19).
The use of the library by monks and nuns was regulated by
Benedictine Rule, which permitted only one borrowing per year,
at the beginning of Lent. Otherwise, books were distributed each
morning and returned each evening (Christ, 45).
The librarian was a well-educated monk who reported directly to
the abbot (Christ, 27).
The installation of a librarian was a festive religious rite (Christ,
19).
Sources:
Christ, Karl. The Handbook of Medieval Library History. Trans.
T.M. Otto. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Price, Lorna. THE PLAN OF ST. GALL IN BRIEF. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1982. 11-12.
Fictive author as a visitor to many libraries in pursuit
of rare books on obscure subjects: intertextual
antecedants inclued Edgar Allan Poe's fictive-narrator in
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and Jorge Borge's fictive-narrator
in "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius."
Difficulty of translating:
Eco's discussion of the difficulties in the original
fictive-author's style and the difficult of translating because
of diversity in stylistic standards is probably
borrowed from Alissandro Manzoni's The Betrothed
("Author's Introduction").
Writing as a labor of love:
Writing as a labor of love, or as an obsession, is
also implied in Manzoni's The Betrothed. There
might be other sources for this theme.
Paratext: "Naturally, a Manuscript" belongs
to a genre of writing that Eco calls a "paratext." Its
function is to establish a "Model Author," the fictive
translator-editor of a work supposedly written by Adso
of Melk.
Eco discusses paratexts, using Edgar Allan Poe's
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Nerval's Sylvie
as his examples, in his Six Walks in the Fictional
Woods, pp. 16-25.
The fictive editor's search for recondite knowledge in
many books obtained during travel: Eco's source for this
theme probably is Jorge Luis Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,"
in Labyrinths, pp. 3-18. Eco's use of this theme
reminds us that The Name of the Rose is a book created
from parts of many other books.
Note on the structure of the narrative (pp. 7-8):
The symbolism introduced intoduced ito the presentation
includes: allusion to Creation and to its opposite, apocalypes (the
narrative occurs over a period of seven days); the structure
of the day in terms of liturgical hours.