eco echo
September 25, 2021 9:24 PM Subscribe
I'm a few hours into an audiobook of The Name of the Rose and I'm having a hard time following some big chunks of elaboration on pertinent details. Not ideal. Can you recommend a blog or read-along sort of resource that recaps each section so I can make sure I'm getting all of the details?
Mostly I'm finding study guides and actual scholarly books of analysis, neither of which are what I'm looking for.
Snowflakes:
* Text yes, audio no (so no podcasts)
* Not interested in any film/tv adaptions or material related specifically to them
* Chapter-thing by chapter-thing would be ideal
* Additional commentary on the contents or on postmodernism or characterization welcome
I fear this may be a book where I just have to commit to rereading down the line to fully "get it" or absorb all the details, but if there's reasonably decent recap somewhere online, I know the hivemind knows how to get there. Thanks!
Mostly I'm finding study guides and actual scholarly books of analysis, neither of which are what I'm looking for.
Snowflakes:
* Text yes, audio no (so no podcasts)
* Not interested in any film/tv adaptions or material related specifically to them
* Chapter-thing by chapter-thing would be ideal
* Additional commentary on the contents or on postmodernism or characterization welcome
I fear this may be a book where I just have to commit to rereading down the line to fully "get it" or absorb all the details, but if there's reasonably decent recap somewhere online, I know the hivemind knows how to get there. Thanks!
Best answer: I am a big fan of The Name of the Rose, and have read it twice, and I think that The Key to The Name of the Rose is probably what you're looking for, but I want to make sure you don't feel like you have to get all the references to follow the book.
Umberto Eco was one of the most well-read people, like, ever, and he knew that his readers weren't going to get all the references in his densely-reference-packed and heavily-researched book. One of the reasons the book is good is that you don't have to get it on that level! (In fact, in Foucault's Pendulum he makes fun of the idea of deeply reading books to find all of the concealed references.)
The most prominent theme of the book IMO is about the tension between the scientific/rationalist worldview and the Christian/Aristotelian thought of the Middle Ages, and we are meant to be seeing this from the rationalist side. So of course all the stuff is hard for us to follow -- it's part of a whole different way of relating to the world that has been extinct in the West for 300 years and out of favor for many more. If you can't keep track of who the Minorites are or the Fraticelli or the Dulcinians or which people are on the Pope's good side that's totally OK. Maybe I am a bit of a philistine, but for most books you can do much worse than following the plot as best you can and letting everything else kind of wash over you.
posted by goingonit at 11:09 AM on September 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
Umberto Eco was one of the most well-read people, like, ever, and he knew that his readers weren't going to get all the references in his densely-reference-packed and heavily-researched book. One of the reasons the book is good is that you don't have to get it on that level! (In fact, in Foucault's Pendulum he makes fun of the idea of deeply reading books to find all of the concealed references.)
The most prominent theme of the book IMO is about the tension between the scientific/rationalist worldview and the Christian/Aristotelian thought of the Middle Ages, and we are meant to be seeing this from the rationalist side. So of course all the stuff is hard for us to follow -- it's part of a whole different way of relating to the world that has been extinct in the West for 300 years and out of favor for many more. If you can't keep track of who the Minorites are or the Fraticelli or the Dulcinians or which people are on the Pope's good side that's totally OK. Maybe I am a bit of a philistine, but for most books you can do much worse than following the plot as best you can and letting everything else kind of wash over you.
posted by goingonit at 11:09 AM on September 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: I guess I was looking for a study guide, thanks Iris Gambol!
posted by snerson at 8:27 PM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by snerson at 8:27 PM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
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You've probably seen "The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages."
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:11 PM on September 25, 2021 [1 favorite]