90 pages • 3 hours read
Umberto EcoThe Name of the Rose
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Naturally, A Manuscript (Preface), Note, PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Naturally, A Manuscript (Preface) Summary
The novel begins with what appears to be a preface to the book itself, dated January 5, 1980. In it, the narrator describes finding a book on August 16, 1968, that was written in 1842 by “a certain Abbé Vallet” (xiii), who reproduced a fourteenth-century narration by the monk, Adso of Melk. Vallet claims he found the book in the monastery of Melk. The narrator describes how he completed a translation from the French into Italian, while also searching for the original manuscript during a trip to Melk. After finding no trace of the manuscript in the monastery library, he then unexpectedly loses the Vallet version. Upon arriving in Paris, he decides to dig deeper, consulting libraries and friendly scholars. Though he cannot find evidence that Adso of Melk ever existed, he does discover a very old book that quotes directly from Adso’s original manuscript. He concludes that “Adso’s memoirs…share the nature of the events he narrates: shrouded in many…shadowy mysteries, beginning with the identity of the author and ending with the abbey’s location” (xvi). He decides to publish his edition of the manuscript anyway, and then recounts the editorial choices he has made.
Note Summary
The narrator notes that “Adso's manuscript is divided into seven days, and each day into periods corresponding to the liturgical hours” (xx), but he suspects the subtitles were added by a third person, likely Abbé Vallet. Nevertheless, they are helpful to the reader, so he preserves them. In Northern Italy at the end of November, sunrise is at approximately 7:30am and sunset at 4:40pm. The liturgical hours are as follows: Matins (between 2:30-3:00am), Lauds or Matins (between 5:00-6:00am), Prime (around 7:30am), Terce (around 9:00am), Sext (noon), Nones (between 2:00-3:00pm),Vespers (around 4:30pm), Compline (around 6:00pm). Sometime before 7:00pm, the monks go to bed.
Prologue Summary
The prologue is written by Adso of Melk when he is an old man, somewhere between 60 and 70 years of age. The events he is about to relate took place when he was a young Benedictine novice in the service of a Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville, who hails from Hibernia (modern-day Ireland). Adso’s intention is to "leave on this parchment my testimony as to the wondrous and terrible events that I happened to observe…now repeating verbatim all I saw and heard.” He then relates some of the conflicts afflicting the Catholic Church during those days, when it was "riven by struggles amongst its leaders" and how he came to serve as "scribe and disciple" to Brother William (3-4). His master is about to embark on a secret mission, but Adso does not know anything about it. Throughout their journey, and through many overheard conversations at various monasteries, Adso begins to piece it together, only fully understanding when they reach their final destination, an abbey somewhere in Italy. Adso relates how he grew to know his master during the two weeks of their journey, and came to regard him as a beloved father figure.
Preface, Note, Prologue Analysis
The Preface, Note, and Prologue are the framing devices of the novel. They set up the idea that this text is a “manuscript” found by a twentieth-century man (the unknown narrator), translated by an eighteenth-century scholar (Abbé Vallet), written by a fourteenth-century monk (Adso of Melk). The effect is to place the narrative at several removes from ‘real’ time in the present day. By casting doubt upon the location of the novel’s events as well as the identity of its original ‘author,’ the text sets up the theme of mystery, and suggests the unknowability of truth, an idea that permeates throughout the book.
In the novel’s Note, the unknown narrator draws our attention to literal time, as experienced by a fourteenth-century Benedictine monk, who is bound to follow the Rule of Saint Benedict (established c.a. 529 AD), which by the ninth century had become the standard form of monastic life throughout much of Western Europe. This tight communal timetable, which revolved around the eight canonical hours, is meant to ensure that the time given by God is not wasted but used in His service, whether for prayer, work, meals, spiritual reading, or sleep.
The Prologue, by Adso of Melk, the author of the original manuscript who is now writing as a very old man, presents this idea of a knowable, verifiable reality, by promising that he has repeated “verbatim all I saw and heard, without venturing to see a design, as if to leave to those who will come after…signs of signs, so that the prayer of deciphering may be exercised on them." Here he introduces his concern that his text lacks meaning. By recording all of the observable and verifiable details, he prays someone will find meaning in his experiences.
From the outset, the novel is fascinated with meaning-making. Umberto Eco was one of the pioneers of this discipline, known as semiotics or semiotic studies. The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and sign processes, such as: indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metaphor, and symbolism, to name just a few. Umberto Eco was a professor, scholar, and philosopher who was also a pioneer of semiotic studies. The field of semiotics hearkens back to the earliest Western philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, who explored the importance of signs and signification in their writings; in turn, their theories had a larger resonance for medieval scholasticism, the method of critical thought which dominated Europe from about 1100 to 1700. Eco has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, and perhaps all, major thinkers.
This novel’s focus on meaning-making begins with the Prologue, which opens with the famous lines from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” (John 1:1). These well-known lines, which all monks have a duty to repeat every day, “with chanting humility,” summarize the “never-changing event whose incontrovertible truth can be asserted” (3). God and His Word are one, but in the fallen human world, the elder Adso states, truth is something we can see “only in fragments,” and we can only “spell out its faithful signals.” The narrative will return to this idea of “reality” as fragmentedthroughout the novel, as its protagonists search endlessly for truth and meaning.
Related Titles
By Umberto Eco
