The Name of the Rose

UMBERTO ECO

The Name of the Rose is one of the best novels intended to know about most of the postmodernist aspects. There are various elements which could be claimed as the postmodern elements. Some of these could be vividly observed as Faction, Pastiches, Collage, Open ending, Magical Realism, Intertexuality, Ambivalence, Reader involvement, Fragmentation of truth, Magical Realism, Minimalism, Minimalism, Historiographic metafiction Postmodern Medievalism" and "Postmodern Millennialism etc. As Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Although the work seems as a murder mystery. There is more accurately seen as a questioning of the meaning of “truth” from theological, philosophical, scholarly, and historical perspectives. In 1980, Umberto Eco published his novel The Name of the Rose, where he implemented, on many occasions, the postmodernist technique of double-coding, addressing the text to audiences of very diverse types of perception and comprehension. Hence Eco has used many postmodern techniques some these are as follows:

Historiographic Metafiction:

Linda Hutcheon coined the term "historiographic metafiction" to refer to works that fictionalize actual historical events or figures; notable examples include, deals with the Victorian Period in The French Lieutenant's Woman. In regards to critical theory, this technique can be related to The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes. And the General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez about Simón Bolívar. For example the novel has been written in 1980. While it talks the story which has been taken place in 1327 in Italy. . For some readers, it’s merely a detective story similar to Conan Doyle’s series about Holmes and Watson, but set in a fourteenth century monastery, for others a narrative full of unique historical details creating a picture of a particular era, or even a contemplation about the differences between a Medieval and a contemporary individual, the relationship and interdependence of religion and literature, about their roles in culture, and other philosophical issues. For instance,

“The only sure thing was that the girl would be burned. And I felt responsible, because it was as if she would also expiate on the pyre the sin I had committed with her”

I burst shamefully into sobs and fled to my cell, where all through the night I chewed my pallet and moaned helplessly, for I was not even allowed—as they did in the romances of chivalry I had read with my companions at Melk—to lament and call out the beloved’s name.”

Open ending:

With a narrative apparatus as complex as it is beautiful, Eco’s work gives the reader both a clear defense of semiotics and an intricate detective story. Both facets are framed by an unfinished story, the narrative of a scholar who finds an interesting tale within a number of manuscripts. Perhaps because the space this framing story is given is so slight compared with 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 14th century. For example, as Adso of Melk says:

“Mine was a poor harvest, but I spent a whole day reaping it, as if from those dissecta membra of the library a message might reach me. […] At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books.”

Magical Realism

Magical realism combines realism and the fantasy in such a way that magical elements grow organically out of the reality portrayed” and, through its use of both real and mystical elements, the genre fragments the world in a blatantly postmodern sense. For example when William of Baskerville says that:

“The divine plan will one day encompass the science of machines, which is natural and healthy magic. […] Unheard-of machines are possible. But you must not worry if they do not exist, because that does not mean they will not exist later.”

It means that William is skeptical about whether some truths can ever be known. He used to work for the Inquisition, prosecuting heretics, but became disillusioned because he found the church’s regime too harsh and was never sure whether the confessions he elicited were true or not. At the same time, however, he hungers for knowledge and longs to uncover the causes of things. He is preoccupied by the relationship between signs and their meanings, which makes him an ideal detective, able to look at the physical evidence he sees in the world and devise plausible explanations. For example, immediately upon his arrival at the abbey, he deduces the location of the abbot’s lost horse based only on the evidence of footprints in the snow and a few broken twigs. William is intellectually brilliant, but also compassionate and sensitive, his tolerance for human fallibility standing in stark contrast to the hypocrisy and judgment of the clergy. Such condition argued the text pretty much a postmodern entity.

Intertextuality

A term coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966 to denote the interdependence of literary texts, the interdependence of any one literary test with all has gone before it. It means that it is the acknowledgement of previous literary works. Postmodernism recognizes the value of tradition. It understands present culture as the product of previous representation. The intertextuality of postmodern fiction, the dependence on literature that has been created earlier, attempts to comment on the situation in which both literature and society found themselves in the second half of the twentieth century. It can be vivdly observed in intratext of U. Eco and Pheripery texts. For instance Eco’s Baudolino novel in which Magical realism meets historical fiction as it is in The Name Of The Rose. As in Baudolino at the end, Niketas reflects to his friend:

“It was a beautiful story. Too bad no one will find out about it.” To which his friend replies, “You surely don’t believe you’re the only writer of stories in this world. Sooner or later, someone – a greater liar than Baudolino – will tell it.”

Similar themes can be observed in Johan Fowles’ “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso sea and Don Dellilo’s The White Noise.

Postmodern Medievalism" and "Postmodern Millenialism

This is bit unique technique which one can feel more vividly in in The Name of the Rose in which the character William of Baskerville is a postmodern thinker, an allegory of modernism emergine out of the earlier matrix of medieval culture. The Name of the Rose, then, could be explored as a work by a postmodern author, allegorizing the emergence of the "modern" during the Middle Ages. For example:

“Michael of Cesena […] proclaimed as a matter of faith and doctrine the poverty of Christ. A worth resolution, meant to safeguard the virtue and purity of the order, it highly displeased the Pope, who perhaps discerned in it a principle that would jeopardize the very claims that he, as head of the church, had made, denying the empire the right to elect bishops, and asserting on the contrary that the papal throne had the right to invest the emperor.”

Reader Involvement

In which there is often through direct address to the reader and the open acknowledgment of the fictional nature of the events being described. But the case is bit different regards his novel. For example:

“The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them.”

Ambivalence:

In Lyotard's philosophy, the postmodern is ambivalent in three main ways. First, it is ambivalent insofar as its products bring us both good and evil; the technology of nuclear power is not possible without that of nuclear bombs. Secondly, it is ambivalent insofar as Lyotard understands the word `postmodern' to apply to the whole range of contemporary culture, from everyday social life to science and art. Thirdly, the term seems ambivalent in the sense of confusion. Prefix "post" in a way different from the way it is usually used. He insists that `postmodern' signifies not the end of modernism"; it is a type of new thinking in relation to modernism. Such as William is skeptical about whether some truths can ever be known. He used to work for the Inquisition, prosecuting heretics, but became disillusioned because he found the church’s regime too harsh and was never sure whether the confessions he elicited were true or not. At the same time, however, he hungers for knowledge and longs to uncover the causes of things. He is preoccupied by the relationship between signs and their meanings, which makes him an ideal detective, able to look at the physical evidence he sees in the world and devise plausible explanations. For example, immediately upon his arrival at the abbey, he deduces the location of the abbot’s lost horse based only on the evidence of footprints in the snow and a few broken twigs. William is intellectually brilliant, but also compassionate and sensitive, his tolerance for human fallibility standing in stark contrast to the hypocrisy and judgment of the clergy. William brings Adso to the abbey to attend a theological disputation on the conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor and the pope, but his astonishing powers of deduction and logical reasoning are soon called into a very different kind of service: solving murders. Although William comes up with various ingenious explanations, he ultimately fails to protect the abbey, its monks, and its invaluable library from the murderous Jorge of Burgos. Adso reports that William died soon after the fire, in an outbreak of the Black Death.

“The spirit is serene only when it contemplates the truth and takes delight in good achieved, and truth and good are not to be laughed at. That is why Christ did not laugh. Laughter foments doubt.”

“But sometimes it is right to doubt.”

“I cannot see any reason. When you are in doubt, you must turn to an authority, to the words of a father or of a doctor; then all reason for doubt ceases.”

Conclusion

All in all, Umberto Eco’s “the name of the rose” is one of the best portrayal of the Postmodernism. Because Eco is well known for his creative blends of historical facts and endless imagination. Where most times it is quite difficult to separate the true events from the magical twists he give them. He is also well versed in placing stories inside of other stories and binding mysteries that can only be pieced together by him as is done in The Name of the rose. Eco alludes to various works, places and occurrences throughout his novel, most ancient books and places visited by Eco. Such as Saint Michael’s Abbey, Sussa valley and even a return to himself. Moreover, The name of the rose could be considered as one of the best practical intended to about Jean Baudrillrad “ Simulacra and Simulation”, Francoi Lyotard “the postmodern condition, Frederic Jameson “ The cultural Logic of late capitalism”,” Postmodernism and consumer society”, Linda Huchen theorizing the postmodernism, Giles Drlauze and Guttari ideas can be apt to be observed in Umberto Eco’s “the name of the rose”.

All in all, this novel I felt as more lisible rather scriptable but still it is considered to be the Postmodern novel which is absolutely apt to argue.

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Refrences

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York, 2004.

Allan, Graham. Intertextuality: the New Critical Idiom. London and New York: Routledge.

Dr Sibghatullah Lectures and Sir Farrukh Nadeem Lectures.

Jean Baudrillrad “ Simulacra and Simulation”,

Francoi Lyotard “the postmodern condition,

Frederic Jameson “ The cultural Logic of late capitalism”,” Postmodernism and consumer society” and

Self – reflection.

LUQMAN KAKAR

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