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The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
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The Name of the Rose (original 1980; edition 1994)

by Umberto Eco

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
19,453310238 (4.2)4 / 1084
Erudite Mystery

This book definitely puts the reader into the 1300s. It is an interesting mystery within an Abbey told by a monk looking back on his days as a novice. I usually don't like mysteries but I liked this one, as it took quite a while to figure it out. If you like a good mystery and don't mind wading through lots of Latin passages and history of religious factions of the Catholic church, you will probably enjoy it. ( )
  Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |
English (223)  Spanish (23)  Italian (17)  French (10)  Catalan (6)  German (6)  Dutch (5)  Portuguese (Portugal) (3)  Portuguese (Brazil) (2)  Danish (2)  Swedish (2)  Greek (1)  Slovak (1)  Portuguese (1)  All languages (302)
Showing 1-25 of 223 (next | show all)
Free and found in to be needing some care on this paperback.
  ClanMcLaughlin | Jan 28, 2024 |
Bien, entretenido, en momento un poco tedioso en los diálogos, se detiene mucho en cada tema. Si no se ah visto la película mejor. ( )
  keplerhc | Jan 22, 2024 |
Some bits a bit heavy but I still really enjoyed. Pictured Sean Connery while reading it. ( )
  SteveMcI | Jan 5, 2024 |
Eco is not writing what you think he's writing. Truthfully, I was confused (while pleasantly intrigued) until probably the last 250 pages, when I began to see through the lens that had been constructed but not yet polished for me. This is a genuinely profound work of (postmodern) fiction. ( )
  Joshua_Pray | Dec 30, 2023 |
Did not finish. The actual mystery/detective plot was interesting but the writing is so bloated with too much detail. ( )
  imjustmea | Dec 23, 2023 |
The Name of the Rose reminds me of The Da Vinci Code in that it's an easy read despite qualifying for the category A Book With More Than 500 Pages. There is only one riddle, rather than the series present in Dan Brown's book, but this one puzzle plays a central role in unraveling the mystery at the center of the story.

Umberto Eco's novel revolves around the visit of Brother William, a former Inquisitor, and his novice, Adso, to an unnamed monastery in northern Italy. Brother William is attending a meeting between representatives of Pope John XXII and the Franciscans, who are debating how both clergy and laymen should live in consideration of Christ's poverty. On the eve of their arrival, a monk is found dead just outside the walls of the monastery and Brother William is asked to investigate by the Abbot.

Over the seven days Brother William and Adso spend at the monastery, several additional murders occur, all revolving around a mysterious book from the monastery’s impressive library whose floorplan is the riddle which must be solved before the conspiracy behind the murders can be understood. Much like Agatha Christy, Eco provides a wealth of suspicious characters who could all be guilty of one or more of the ongoing murders.

Having a grounding in Christian dogma helps but is not necessary to understand the internecine squabbles between the various factions of monks with their competing beliefs. However, suspending your expectations regarding the behavior of 14th century monks is a prerequisite for enjoying this book, as you will encounter a boisterous and occasionally antagonistic group of men engaging in both homo- and heterosexual acts and displaying all the petty jealousies of modern-day politicians.

My only quibble with the book is Eco's habit of writing long lists of what I found to be boring details adding nothing to the narrative. The first of these is Adso's encounter with the apocalyptic sculpture of the church, which seems more a vision he suffers than merely observation. Adso's dream while chanting at a funeral is another; its inclusion seemed unnecessary despite its connection to historical facts. I wound up skimming these sections without losing the thread of the plot.

My copy of the novel had a long appendix with Eco's commentary on his writing process which I found interesting from a theoretical perspective; however, the novel stands on its own without need for explanation.

About halfway through the book I looked up the movie and discovered Sean Connery stars in it. I immediately knew he plays Brother William and struggled not to hear his voice when subsequently reading the monk's dialogue. Afterwards, I tried to watch the movie, but it had a Monty Pythonish aspect and I gave up after the third murder. Stick to the book. ( )
  skavlanj | Nov 26, 2023 |
I wanted to read this after the film came out, as historical "whodunnits" attract me.[return][return]However, I was not able to get very far, as I found the language impenitrable. I dont know if this is Eco's fault, or that of the Italian to English Translator. I was therefore unable to get very far and had to leave it aside.
  nordie | Oct 14, 2023 |
I wanted to read this after the film came out, as historical "whodunnits" attract me.[return][return]However, I was not able to get very far, as I found the language impenitrable. I dont know if this is Eco's fault, or that of the Italian to English Translator. I was therefore unable to get very far and had to leave it aside.
  nordie | Oct 14, 2023 |
A good story, with drama, mystery, puzzles, and some romance. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 12, 2023 |
There is a lot that I missed because I don't know Latin, but it was still a great book. Maybe I should re-read, now that there are several Latin-English translation sites. ( )
  blueskygreentrees | Jul 30, 2023 |
¿Qué puedo decir de esta obra que no se haya dicho ya? Sólo que en relecturas aprecias y disfrutas cosas nuevas y distintas a las lecturas anteriores, eso es lo magnífico de volver a un libro una y otra vez, en esta ocasión en audiolibro el que, por cierto, está muy bien cuidado y hace honor a un clásico como éste. ( )
  uvejota | Jul 26, 2023 |
Vanvremensko delo koje zamenjuje našu stvarnost sopstvenom.

Engleski franjevacki monah Vilijam od Baskervila stiže u vešto skrivenu opatiju u Alpima severne Italije. Prati ga mladi pomocnik i benediktinski iskušenik Adso od Melka, koji mu pomaže da rasvetli surovo ubistvo. Osim što je poprište zlocina, ovaj nadaleko cuveni benediktinski manastir, koji vec vekovima privlaci monahe iz cele Evrope, cuva mnoge tajne, a medu njima i cuvenu biblioteku.
Dok se Vilijam i Adso hvataju ukoštac sa zamršenom zagonetkom prepunom izazova i dolaze do zapanjujucih saznanja, misteriozna ubistva se nižu, a njih dvojica ulaze u trag staroj jeretickoj knjizi koju ubica želi da zadrži daleko od ociju znatiželjnih monaha.

U jeku borbe za duhovnu i svetovnu vlast, Vilijam stoji na pragu otkrica oštroumnog ubice..
  vanjus | Jun 26, 2023 |
I found reading The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco a chore as it was dense, slow moving and complex. Often touted as a whodunit, I would class the book as historical fiction as it is set in an Italian monastery in 1327, and the mystery also includes a fair amount of biblical analysis, medieval studies, and a slight knowledge of classical Latin as there are many quotes that need to be deciphered.

The story is told by Adso, a young novice monk who is travelling with William of Baskerville, who has been called upon to investigate a crime in a Benedictine abbey. Of course the deaths mount and it becomes apparent that William is on the trail of a conspiracy with both dangerous knowledge and the future of the Catholic Church hanging in the balance. William is a very interesting character and he sets about solving the mystery with logic, theology and his own innate curiosity and intelligence. The book is layered with history, religion and, the part I found most difficult, lengthy passages of medieval rhetoric.

Originally published in 1980, The Name of the Rose has won many awards and is considered a literary masterpiece. For me, it was just too long, too dense, and too difficult to keep track of. The many untranslated Latin passages made me feel uneducated and I suspect that I might have gotten more out of simply watching the 1986 film. ( )
  DeltaQueen50 | May 17, 2023 |
As Brother William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan monk, nears the Italian abbey where he’s to attend a conclave, he correctly deduces from tracks in the snow and other minute details that the party of brethren approaching him on the road are seeking a horse — whose name he also guesses.

Naturally, this astonishes both the search party and William’s companion, his scribe, a German novice named Adso. It also pleases the abbot, who’s delighted to have so keen an observer on hand, because a young monk has died under suspicious circumstances, and the mystery must be solved before the conclave takes place in a few days’ time.

Or, to be precise, the abbot seems pleased, but the readily apparent struggle between truth and expediency dividing the abbey’s occupants, heightened by the anticipated high-level meeting, clouds his motives.

The year is 1327, and the church is fighting itself, with one pope in Rome, and the other in Avignon. The expected French envoys — and, menacingly, their accompanying armed force — include a charismatic, unscrupulous inquisitor whom William knows and fears; he was once an inquisitor himself but gave it up because he felt the entire process of hunting heretics was irrational and unjust.

Since then, he has openly avowed the empirical philosophy of Roger Bacon and William Occam (he of the famous razor), beliefs that unsettle many other monks and, in their eyes, skate dangerously close to heresy.

Moreover, the abbot has forbidden William to investigate the library stacks, labyrinthine rooms that no one save the librarian himself may enter. This restriction cripples William’s efforts, particularly after more monks die, and he supposes that a hidden text holds the key. So, with Adso in tow, he invades the abbey’s sanctum sanctorum, with ever-startling results.

Adso makes a superb narrator and foil, a Watson scared of where knowledge will lead, to William’s Holmes, who thinks knowledge itself can be neither good nor evil. A weighty theme, and The Name of the Rose tips the scales at almost 600 pages, but Eco does a brilliant job focusing on two issues that, at first glance, seem too ridiculous to kill for, whether for personal motives, to serve the church, or for reasons of state.

First, did Christ ever laugh? And second, did he and his apostles choose poverty, the belief on which the Franciscan order rests?

But the narrative, if at length, shows why these questions matter in 1327 and today. If Christ did not laugh, the official reasoning goes, satire, jokes, and humor are either vile, a threat to faith, or both. However, William argues that if a devout person must have only a certain sober, humorless mind, then the inquisitors rule, as in fact they do, and the crucial precept of accepting faith through free will ceases to exist.

As William warns Adso, “The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.”

The question of poverty has a more immediate political implication. The Franciscan order has splintered, prompting rebellions against church power, to which the church has responded by burning heretics, charging the use of magic, and accusing their opponents of free love and appalling butchery. But as William tells Adso, the rebels don’t care about church doctrines, especially; they resent the extreme wealth of the church and the regimes it supports, both of which contribute to keep the poor as they are.

Amid all this, monks continue to die, and William must divert his efforts from solving the mystery to play politician during the conclave, standing up for his beliefs while avoiding condemnation. As you may have figured out by now (how did I give it away?), The Name of the Rose is a discursive book, but no less mesmerizing for that:

The Name of the Rose does what the best historical fiction should: illuminate the past by its own lights and therefore reveal the present. As a mystery, it is excellent; to that, add profundity and power. ( )
1 vote Novelhistorian | Jan 29, 2023 |
Brother William of Baskerville and his novice assistant play a 14th-century Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as they investigate deaths taking place in a monastery about to be visited by two church delegations fighting each other for religious and secular control at a time of religious schisms that foreshadow the Reformation.

A huge, epic, at times maddeningly overwritten novel. When things were happening, it was an interesting book; when the author digressed (for pages and pages and pages), I found myself committing the cardinal sin of skipping the moment I saw one of these digressions coming. I'm not against digressions in books, I just want them to be relevant to the story, rather than being included because an Italian editor didn't have the guts to pull Umberto Eco aside and say, "Nice story. Do you mind if we cut out about a hundred pages total, from several different places, where nobody will miss them? You'll still have 700 pages left."

I hate to say this, but I really do believe that this story is best enjoyed as encapsulated by the film by the same name starring Sean Connery as the sleuthing monk and Christian Slater as his naive sidekick. The only reason I hesitate to endorse the movie over the book is that the movie doesn't quite do justice to the actual Church history that the novel is trying to capture, and which is itself interesting. Aside from that, you get a much more agile tale told in the context of the film. ( )
  Ricardo_das_Neves | Jan 14, 2023 |
Labirintet mesjetare të bibliotekave tregohen si rrugë të jetës dhe vdekjes. Homazhi për prozën detektive të transponuar në kohën e lindjes së kulturës së re dhe Europës së re, ku qendrat e fuqisë nga abacitë e largëta janë në qendrat e reja tregtare – qytet.
  BibliotekaFeniks | Jan 4, 2023 |
Feel like a three is generous on this one as eventually stopped reading anything not to do with the mystery. However, the mystery bit was good. And I suppose if one had a great interest in 14th Century Catholic dogma and politics the other stuff wouldn't be so bad. ( )
  sgwordy | Dec 31, 2022 |
kitaba dair anlatılacak çok şey var. dönemin tarihsel arka planı, siyasi çatışmalar, felsefi meseleler, insanların günlük yaşantılarına dair detaylar, orta çağ avrupa'sının zulümleri, yobazlıkları vs…
konulara genel olarak yabancı olmama rağmen bir haftada kitabı bitirdim. her ne kadar çeviriyi başarılı bulsam da bence bazı kelime seçimleri zorlamaydı, farklı olabilirdi (tasım, yengi gibi).
kitabın başında kısaca bahsedilen, fransa kralı ve papa tarafından tapınak şövalyelerinin ortadan kaldırılması hadisesi, daha birkaç gün öncesinde oynadığım bir bilgisayar oyununda da konu edilmişti, ilginç oldu.
biraz ara verdikten sonra foucault sarkacı ile eco'ya devam etme niyetim var. ( )
  mahirzade | Dec 21, 2022 |
Eco is my least favorite author if you don't even consider Ayan Rayn. First the man even understand the definition for "pedantic"! ( )
  Huba.Library | Nov 15, 2022 |
An unforgettable, if slightly frustrating read. I felt like I was reading a beautifully written, unique historical detective story only for a priest to put my book down and give me a lecture on religious doctrine for twenty minutes before I could get back to the good stuff. The novel is undoubtedly long winded, but also the characters are well established, the setting is interesting and the language is hypnotic at times. Great ending bumps it up to a 4/5. ( )
  hskey | Nov 11, 2022 |
Erudite Mystery

This book definitely puts the reader into the 1300s. It is an interesting mystery within an Abbey told by a monk looking back on his days as a novice. I usually don't like mysteries but I liked this one, as it took quite a while to figure it out. If you like a good mystery and don't mind wading through lots of Latin passages and history of religious factions of the Catholic church, you will probably enjoy it. ( )
  Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |
Here's a book that is frequently cited as a classic, mandatory for all who aspire to be called literate, and it is.

Curiously, it has been borrowed from so often since it's publish, that I can't tell if authors like J.K. Rowling borrow from it liberally and intentionally, or unintentionally because so many others have too. It was once far more original than it comes across now. At any rate, you can consider this J.K. Rowling for grownups.

Interesting that there are many literary tricks Eco used that have not been widely mimicked since, and they work. ( )
  NathanRH | Sep 7, 2022 |
Where do I begin? This book is dense and multi-faceted, and worth every hour and brain cell and glimpse into post-Templar monastic life. The mystery is more relevant in the film adaptation, while the mystery of the Labyrinth and the conflicts between the different Orders are the main part of the book.

Set "somewhere" in Italy in 1327 and written by the aged Adso, he recounts his journeys as a young man with his master, William of Baskerville, to solve a suicide (later two, later three murders) within a Franciscan monastery. William must also argue for a monk, Michael, who is shortly to journey to the Pope in Avignon to argue for the sanctity of the poverty of Christ. Arguments against the Benedictines, who hold that the Church should be rich in material things.

I don't profess to understand, or sometimes even follow, the various power-plays between the sects of Franciscans, Benedictines, Cluniacs, Minorites, and other monastic orders, except in the broadest possible scope. What I did find fascinating was the animosity between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emporer and how each side vied to gain the upper hand. And how, sadly, the ruthless Inquisitor Bernard Gui wins the unconscionable arguments.

While re-reading this I found my original pen drawing of the labyrinth, with its towers and openings and polygon sides. The search that William and Adso make of the labyrinth-library is meticulous and leads me to wonder if such a building ever existed. Just like the Library of Alexandria, all of the forever-lost learning is a central tragedy. As is the treatment of the poor, illiterate peasant girl and condemnation of so-called heretics.

A brilliant work by a brilliant mind. ( )
2 vote threadnsong | Jun 5, 2022 |
Uno dei più bei libri che abbia mai letto!! La capacità di scrittura di Eco si esprime al massimo in questo libro. Un uso del linguaggio da vero maestro ..metafore, descrizioni, etc rendono questo libro un capolavoro.

Juuuust perfect! There are so many events happening in this book, all combined with such a great sense of observation, knowledge, judgement of all on earth, above and in the imagination. I was flabbergasted of how baleful and magical the plot was.. The Name of the Rose scales the immeasurability of knowledge, imagination, and reality. Umberto Eco uses the study of language and symbols, ensnared in a fictive murder mystery, to illuminate to the reader the similarities and differences between what we consider as reality and what actually is. It’s odd how transcendent this book is..you’re tracing your own footsteps back in time, but also forward, for what’s to come.
This personification of human complexity and contradiction in thought, feeling, and emotion is why The Name of the Rose draws from many wells. It tackles religion, epistemology, politics, philosophy, and psychology.

The Name of the Rose will always endure on my shelf as a mysteriously potent novel that is about everything and nothing at all..it turns the world upside down... ( )
1 vote kseniiiag | Apr 14, 2022 |
En el tema de las intrigas es claro y envuelve bien en los misterios. Esta bien escrito sus palabras denotan una prosa y un sentido bien estructurado que se disfruta.
Lo que no disfrute son las innumerables explicaciones teologicas antiguas, de historia, de pensamientos, si bien estan escritos correctamente no me suman demasiado en la historia, salvo pasajes que luego se necesitan para la comprension global de la trama. Me hizo largo el libro.
No es una mala novela, simplemente no soy del todo el publico que necesita, hubiese conocido a los personajes con menos texto de la misma forma. ( )
  Enzokolis | Jan 17, 2022 |
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