“The Name of the Rose”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

The Name of the Rose ({{lang-it|Il nome della rosa}} {{IPA-it|il ˈnoːme della ˈrɔːza|}}) is the 1980 debut novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327; an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. It was translated into English by William Weaver in 1983.

The novel has sold over 50 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling books ever published.^[1] It has received many international awards and accolades, such as the Strega Prize in 1981 and Prix Medicis Étrangère in 1982, and was ranked 14th on Le Monde{{'s}} 100 Books of the Century list.

Plot summary

In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk, a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological disputation. This abbey is being used as an embassy between Pope John XXII, and the Friars Minor, who are suspected of heresy.

The monastery is disturbed by the death of Adelmo of Otranto, an illuminator revered for his illustrations. Adelmo was skilled at comical artwork, especially concerning religious matters. William is tasked by the monastery's abbot, Abo of Fossanova to investigate the death, and he has a debate with one of the oldest monks in the abbey, Jorge of Burgos, about the theological meaning of laughter, which Jorge despises.

The next day, a scholar of Aristotle and translator of Greek and Arabic, Venantius of Salvemec, is found dead in a vat of pig's blood. Previously, William and Adso had been prohibited from the library by the librarian Malachi of Hildesheim, so they penetrate the labyrinth, discovering that there must be a hidden room, entitled the finis Africae. Benno of Uppsala, a rhetoric scholar, reveals to William that Malachi, and his assistant Berengar of Arundel, had a homosexual relationship, until Berengar seduced Adelmo, who committed suicide out of religious shame. The only other monks who knew about the indiscretions were Jorge and Venantius.

By the day after, Berengar has gone missing, which puts pressure onto William. William learns of how Salvatore of Montferrat, and Remigio of Varagine, two cellarer monks, had a history with the Dulcinian heretics. Meanwhile, Adso is seduced by a peasant girl, with whom he has his first sexual experience. After confessing to William, Adso is absolved, although he still feels guilty. Severinus of Sankt Wendel, the herbalist, tells William that Venantius's body had black stains on the tongue and fingers, which suggests poison. William and Adso penetrate the library once more, discovering that Venantius had a book stolen from him, which they pursue.

On the fourth day, Berengar is found drowned in a bath, although he bears stains similar to those of Venantius. Bernard Gui, a member of the Inquisition, arrives to search for the murderer via Papal deduction. Due to this arrival, Gui arrests the peasant girl Adso loved, as well as Salvatore, accusing them both of heresy.

Remigio is interrogated by Gui, who scares him into revealing his heretic past, as well as falsely confessing to the crimes of the Abbey. Severinus then is found dead in his room, to which Jorge responds by leading a sermon about the coming of the Antichrist.

Malachi returns to the early sermon that day near death, and his final words concern scorpions. Nicholas of Morimondo, the glazier, tells William that whoever is the librarian would then become the Abbot, and with new light, William goes to the library to search for evidence. The Abbot is distraught that William has not solved the crime, and that the Inquisition is undermining him, so he fires William. That night, William and Adso penetrate the library once more in search of the finis Africae.

William and Adso discover Jorge waiting for them in the forbidden room. He says that he has been masterminding the Abbey for years, and his last victim is the Abbot himself, who has been trapped into a secret passage of the library. The Abbot suffocates, and Jorge tells them that Venantius's hidden book was Aristotle's Second Poetics, which speaks of the virtues of laughter, something Jorge despises. Jorge put poison on the pages on the book, knowing that a reader would have to lick his fingers to turn them. Venantius was translating the book and died. Berengar found the body and disposed of it in pig's blood, fearing exposure, before reading the book himself and dying. Malachi was convinced by Jorge to retrieve the book, which was stashed with Severinus, so he kills Severinus and retrieves the book, before getting curious and dying as well.

All of the murders time out with the Seven Trumpets, which call for objects falling from the sky (Adelmo threw himself from a tower), pools of blood, poison from water, bashing of the stars (Severinus was killed with his head bashed in with a celestial orb), scorpions, locusts, and fire. Jorge consumes the book's poisoned pages and uses Adso's lantern to start a fire, which burns down the library. As the fire spreads to the rest of the abbey, William laments his failure. Confused and defeated, William and Adso escape the abbey. Years later, Adso, now aged, returns to the ruins of the abbey and collects books that were salvaged from the fire, creating a lesser library.

Characters

Major themes

Eco was a professor of semiotics, and employs techniques of metanarrative, partial fictionalization, and linguistic ambiguity to create a world enriched by layers of meaning. The solution to the central murder mystery hinges on the contents of Aristotle's book on Comedy, which has been lost. In spite of this, Eco speculates on the content and has the characters react to it. Through the motif of this lost and possibly suppressed book which might have aestheticized the farcical, the unheroic and the skeptical, Eco also makes an ironically slanted plea for tolerance and against dogmatic or self-sufficient metaphysical truths—an angle which reaches the surface in the final chapters.^[2]

The aedificium's labyrinth

The mystery revolves around the abbey library, situated in a fortified tower—the aedificium. This structure has three floors—the ground floor contains the kitchen and refectory, the first floor a scriptorium, and the top floor is occupied by the library.^[5] The two lower floors are open to all, while only the librarian may enter the last. A catalogue of books is kept in the scriptorium, where manuscripts are read and copied. A monk who wishes to read a book would send a request to the librarian, who, if he thought the request justified, would bring it to the scriptorium. Finally, the library is in the form of a labyrinth, whose secret only the librarian and the assistant librarian know.^[6]

The aedificium has four towers at the four cardinal points, and the top floor of each has seven rooms on the outside, surrounding a central room. There are another eight rooms on the outer walls, and sixteen rooms in the centre of the maze. Thus, the library has a total of fifty-six rooms.^[7] Each room has a scroll containing a verse from the Book of Revelation. The first letter of the verse is the letter corresponding to that room.^[8] The letters of adjacent rooms, read together, give the name of a region (e.g. Hibernia in the West tower), and those rooms contain books from that region. The geographical regions are:

Two rooms have no lettering - the easternmost room, which has an altar, and the central room on the south tower, the so-called finis Africae, which contains the most heavily guarded books, and can only be entered through a secret door. The entrance to the library is in the central room of the east tower, which is connected to the scriptorium by a staircase.^[9]

Title

Much attention has been paid to the mystery the book's title refers to. In fact, Eco has stated that his intention was to find a "totally neutral title".^[4] In one version of the story, when he had finished writing the novel, Eco hurriedly suggested some ten names for it and asked a few of his friends to choose one. They chose The Name of the Rose.^[10] In another version of the story, Eco had wanted the neutral title Adso of Melk, but that was vetoed by his publisher, and then the title The Name of the Rose "came to me virtually by chance." In the Postscript to the Name of the Rose, Eco claims to have chosen the title "because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left".^[4]

The book's last line, {{lang|la|"Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus"}} translates as: "the rose of old remains only in its name; we possess naked names." The general sense, as Eco pointed out,^[11] was that from the beauty of the past, now disappeared, we hold only the name. In this novel, the lost "rose" could be seen as Aristotle's book on comedy (now forever lost), the exquisite library now destroyed, or the beautiful peasant girl now dead.

The title is also an allusion to the nominalist position in the problem of universals, taken by William of Ockham. According to nominalism, universals are bare names: there is not a universal rose, only the name rose.^[12]

This text has also been translated as "Yesterday's rose stands only in name, we hold only empty names." This line is a verse by twelfth century monk Bernard of Cluny (also known as Bernard of Morlaix). Medieval manuscripts of this line are not in agreement: Eco quotes one Medieval variant verbatim,^[13] but Eco was not aware at the time of the text more commonly printed in modern editions, in which the reference is to Rome (Roma), not to a rose (rosa).^[14] The alternative text, with its context, runs: Nunc ubi Regulus aut ubi Romulus aut ubi Remus? / Stat Roma pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus. This translates as "Where now is Regulus, or Romulus, or Remus? / Primordial Rome abides only in its name; we hold only naked names."^[15]

Also the title of the book may be related to a poem by the Mexican poet and mystic Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–1695):

which appears in Eco's Postscript to the Name of the Rose, and is translated into English in "Note 1" of that book as:

Allusions

To other works

The name of the central character, William of Baskerville, alludes both to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (compare The Hound of the Baskervilles – also, Adso's description of William in the beginning of the book resembles, almost word for word, Dr. Watson's description of Sherlock Holmes when he first makes his acquaintance in A Study in Scarlet) and to William of Ockham (see the next section). The name of the narrator, his apprentice Adso of Melk is among other things a pun on Simplicio from Galileo Galilei's Dialogue; Adso deriving from "ad Simplicio" ("to Simplicio"). Adso's putative place of origin, Melk, is the site of a famous medieval library, at Melk Abbey. And his name echoes the narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Watson (omitting the first and last latters, with "t" and "d" being phonetically similar).^[16]

The blind librarian Jorge of Burgos is a nod to Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, a major influence on Eco. Borges was blind during his later years and was also director of Argentina's national library; his short story "The Library of Babel" is an inspiration for the secret library in Eco's book.^[17] Another of Borges's stories, "The Secret Miracle", features a blind librarian. In addition, a number of other themes drawn from various of Borges's works are used throughout The Name of the Rose: labyrinths, mirrors, sects and obscure manuscripts and books.

The ending also owes a debt to Borges' short story "Death and the Compass", in which a detective proposes a theory for the behavior of a murderer. The murderer learns of the theory and uses it to trap the detective. In The Name of the Rose, the librarian Jorge uses William's belief that the murders are based on the Revelation of John to misdirect William, though in Eco's tale, the detective succeeds in solving the crime.

The "poisoned page" motif may have been inspired by Alexandre Dumas' novel La Reine Margot (1845). It was also used in the film Il giovedì (1963) by Italian director Dino Risi.^[18] A similar story is associated with the Chinese erotic novel Jin Ping Mei, translated as The Golden Lotus or The Plum in the Golden Vase.

Eco seems also to have been aware of Rudyard Kipling's short story "The Eye of Allah", which touches on many of the same themes, like optics, manuscript illumination, music, medicine, priestly authority and the Church's attitude to scientific discovery and independent thought, and which also includes a character named John of Burgos.

Eco was also inspired by the 19th century Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni, citing The Betrothed as an example of the specific type of historical novel he purposed to create, in which some of the characters may be made up, but their motivations and actions remain authentic to the period and render history more comprehensible.^[19]

Throughout the book, there are Latin quotes, authentic and apocryphal. There are also discussions of the philosophy of Aristotle and of a variety of millenarist heresies, especially those associated with the fraticelli. Numerous other philosophers are referenced throughout the book, often anachronistically, including Wittgenstein.

To actual history and geography

William of Ockham, who lived during the time at which the novel is set, first put forward the principle known as Ockham's Razor, often summarised as the dictum that one should always accept as most likely the simplest explanation that accounts for all the facts (a method used by William of Baskerville in the novel).

The book describes monastic life in the 14th century. The action takes place at a Benedictine abbey during the controversy surrounding the Apostolic poverty between branches of Franciscans and Dominicans; (see renewed controversy on the question of poverty). The setting was inspired by monumental Saint Michael's Abbey in Susa Valley, Piedmont and visited by Umberto Eco.^[20]{{failed verification|date=May 2014}} The Spirituals abhor wealth, bordering on the Apostolics or Dulcinian heresy. The book highlights this tension that existed within Christianity during the medieval era: the Spirituals, one faction within the Franciscan order, demanded that the Church should abandon all wealth, and some heretical sects began killing the well-to-do, while the majority of the Franciscans and the clergy took to a broader interpretation of the gospel. Also in the background is the conflict between Louis IV and Pope John XXII, with the Emperor supporting the Spirituals and the Pope condemning them.

A number of the characters, such as Bernard Gui, Ubertino of Casale and the Minorite Michael of Cesena, are historical figures, though Eco's characterization of them is not always historically accurate. His portrayal of Gui in particular has been widely criticised by historians as an exaggerated caricature; Edward Peters has stated that the character is "rather more sinister and notorious ... than [Gui] ever was historically", and he and others have argued that the character is actually based on the grotesque portrayals of inquisitors and Catholic prelates more broadly in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic literature, such as Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk (1796).^[21]^[22] Additionally, part of the novel's dialogue is derived from Gui's inquisitor's manual, the Practica Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis. In the inquisition scene, the character of Gui asks the cellarer Remigius, "What do you believe?", to which Remigius replies, "What do you believe, my Lord?" Gui responds, "I believe in all that the Creed teaches," and Remigius tells him, "So I believe, my Lord." Bernard then points out that Remigius is not claiming to believe in the Creed, but to believe that he, Gui, believes in the Creed; this is a paraphrased example from Gui's inquisitor's manual, used to warn inquisitors of the manipulative tendencies of heretics.^[23]

Adso's description of the portal of the monastery is recognizably that of the portal of the church at Moissac, France.^[24] Dante Alighieri and his Comedy are mentioned once in passing. There is also a quick reference to a famous "Umberto of Bologna"—Umberto Eco himself.

Adaptations

Film

Television

Dramatic works

Games

Music

See also

References

1. ^Library Journal {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080921060952/http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Name-of-the-Rose/Umberto-Eco/e/9780156001311/ |date=2008-09-21 }} (no date)
2. ^Lars Gustafsson, postscript to Swedish edition The Name of the Rose
3. ^¹Christopher Butler. Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction. OUP, 2002. {{ISBN|978-0-19-280239-2}} — see pages 32 and 126 for discussion of the novel.
4. ^¹²³"Postscript to the Name of the Rose", printed in The Name of the Rose (Harcourt, Inc., 1984), p. 506.
5. ^First Day, Terce, paragraph 37
6. ^First Day, Terce, paragraph 67
7. ^Third Day, Vespers, paragraphs 50-56
8. ^Third Day, Vespers, paragraphs 64-68
9. ^Fourth Day, After Compline
10. ^Umberto Eco. On Literature. Secker & Warburg, 2005, p. 129-130. {{ISBN|0-436-21017-7}}.
11. ^{{cite web | title = Name of the Rose: Title and Last Line | url = http://www.umbertoeco.com/id-39/UmbertEco_Name_of_the_Rose_Umberto_Eco.html | accessdate = 2007-03-15 |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20070121024505/http://www.umbertoeco.com/id-39/UmbertEco_Name_of_the_Rose_Umberto_Eco.html |archivedate = 2007-01-21}}
12. ^https://www.crisismagazine.com/1987/war-of-the-rose-the-historical-context-of-the-name-of-the-rose
13. ^Eco would have found this reading in, for example, the standard text edited by H.C. Hoskier (London 1929); only the Hiersemann manuscript preserves "Roma". For the verse quoted in this form before Eco, see e.g. Alexander Cooke, An essay on the origin, progress, and decline of rhyming Latin verse (1828), [https://books.google.com/books?id=u2_DthwIpvsC&pg=PA59&dq=%22stat+rosa+pristina%22 p. 59], and Hermann Adalbert Daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus sive hymnorum canticorum sequentiarum (1855), [https://books.google.com/books?id=6ScPAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA290&dq=%22stat+rosa+pristina%22 p. 290]. See further Pepin, Ronald E. "Adso's closing line in The Name of the Rose." American notes and queries (May–June 1986): 151–152.
14. ^As Eco wrote in "The Author and his Interpreters" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080101231523/http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_author.html |date=2008-01-01 }} "Thus the title of my novel, had I come across another version of Morlay's poem, could have been The Name of Rome (thus acquiring fascist overtones)".
15. ^See the source edition of 2009: Bernard of Cluny, De contemptu mundi: Une vision du monde vers 1144, ed. and trans. A. Cresson, Témoins de notre histoire (Turnhout, 2009), p. 126 (bk. 1, 952), and note thereto p. 257.
16. ^{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ipbOrcd8q9UC&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq|title=Reading Eco: An Anthology|editor-first=Rocco|editor-last=Capozzi|date=February 22, 1997|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=9780253112828}}
17. ^{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44089369|title=The library of Babel|last=1899-1986.|first=Borges, Jorge Luis,|date=2000|publisher=David R. Godine|others=Desmazières, Erik, 1948-, Hurley, Andrew, 1944-, Giral, Angela.|isbn=156792123X|location=Boston|oclc=44089369}}
18. ^notes to {{cite book|title=Lolito|author=Daniele Luttazzi|pp=514–15}}
19. ^{{Cite book|title=Postscript to The name of the rose|last=Umberto.|first=Eco,|date=1984|publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich|others=Eco, Umberto.|year=|isbn=9780151731565|edition=1st|location=San Diego|pages=|oclc=10996520}}
20. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.avosacra.it/sito/curiosita_sulla_sacra.html|title=AVOSacra - Associazione volontari Sacra di San Michele|publisher=}}
21. ^{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18683092|title=Inquisition|last=Peters|first=Edward|publisher=University of California Press|year=1988|isbn=0520066308|location=Berkeley|pages=60, 307|oclc=|quote=}}
22. ^{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/313645262|title=Medieval film|last=Ganim|first=John M.|date=|publisher=Manchester University Press|others=|year=2009|isbn=9780719077029|editor-last=Bernau|editor-first=Anke|location=Manchester|pages=198-9|chapter=Medieval noir: anatomy of a metaphor|oclc=313645262|editor-last2=Bildhauer|editor-first2=Bettina}}
23. ^{{Cite web|url=https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/heresy2.asp|title=Bernard Gui: Inquisitorial Technique (c.1307-1323)|last=|first=|date=|website=Internet History Sourcebooks Project|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=2019-02-27}}
24. ^{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cJRV1c57xfgC&pg=PA248&lpg=PA248&dq=eglise+moissac+eco&source=bl&ots=j21a4pin7R&sig=DD4AIlhaW9YeYpObKApyUXvVsYE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4-uj62f_YAhUxja0KHc0TBR4Q6AEIWjAJ#v=onepage&q=eglise%20moissac%20eco&f=false|title=Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and Their Representation in the Arts, 1000-2000|last=Petersen|first=Nils Holger|last2=Clüver|first2=Claus|last3=Bell|first3=Nicolas|date=2004|publisher=Rodopi|isbn=9042009993|language=en}}
25. ^{{cite web|work=The New York Times|title=The Name of the Rose (1986) FILM: MEDIEVAL MYSTERY IN 'NAME OF THE ROSE'|authorlink=Vincent Canby|last=Canby|first=Vincent|date=September 24, 1986|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A0DE0DE153AF937A1575AC0A960948260}}
26. ^{{cite web|last=Roxborough|first=Scott|url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/john-turturro-rupert-everett-star-tv-version-name-rose-1054224|title=John Turturro, Rupert Everett to Star in TV Version of 'The Name of the Rose'|work=The Hollywood Reporter|date=November 2, 2017|accessdate=November 14, 2017}}
27. ^{{cite web|last=Vivarelli|first=Nick|url=https://variety.com/2017/tv/global/john-turturro-will-play-14th-century-monk-william-of-baskerville-in-the-name-of-the-rose-tv-adaptation-exclusive-1202591009/|title=John Turturro to Play Monk William of Baskerville in ‘Name of The Rose’ TV Adaptation (EXCLUSIVE)|work=Variety|date=October 16, 2017|accessdate=November 14, 2017}}
28. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0017824|title=Nomen Rosae - World of Spectrum|publisher=}}
29. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0015662|title=Noma della Rosa, Il - World of Spectrum|publisher=}}
30. ^{{cite web|url=http://abadiadelcrimenextensum.com/|title=La abadía del crimen Extensum|publisher=}}