Murder and Mayhem in a Medieval Abbey: The Philosophy of The Name of the Rose

Author(s): DAVID G. BAXTER

Source: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1989), pp. 170-189
Published by: Penn State University Press
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 DAVID G. BAXTER

Murder and Mayhem in a Medieval

Abbey: The Philosophy of
The Name of theRose

There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is
whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is,what is
the crime and how was it committed?1

Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of theRose, is a fascinating attempt to

utilize the traditional framework of the novel in order to illustrate and
present some very important philosophical principles. As such, it is a work
that stands in the tradition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Ka
ramazov, Hermann Hesse's The Glass-Bead Game and Jean-Paul Sartre's

Nausea and the Roads toFreedom trilogy.The aim of this paper will be to
identify and discuss the major philosophical concepts that Eco employs in
his book. In this way, we may attempt to seek a fuller and clearer under
standing of the novel itself and, in addition, identify some important and
interesting areas for further research.
Eco's inspiration forwriting this novel arose when, as he tells us, he felt
"like poisoning a monk."2 Initially, this ghoulish desire was to have been
acted out inmodern day Italy but Eco, who had been trained originally as a
medievalist, eventually came to the conclusion that,

. . . since theMiddle Ages were my day-to-day fantasy, Imight as

well write a novel actually set in that period. I know the present
only through the television screen, whereas I have a direct knowl
edge of theMiddle Ages.3

THE JOURNALOF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, Vol. Ill,No. 3, 1989.

Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park and London.

170

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 THENAMEOF THE ROSE 171

In order to understand fully the complex structure ofThe Name of theRose it

is important to grasp the significance of these remarks. Eco is, in fact,
making the rather startling assertion that he does not intend to write a
novel about theMiddle Ages, rather, he will write a novel in theMiddle
Ages.
The most obvious question which arises at this point ishow a twentieth
century professor of semiotics can possibly hope to write a novel in the
Middle Ages. What Eco has to do is somehow convince his audience that
they are not simply engaged in reading a contemporary work of literature
that just happens to be set in the fourteenth century, but rather, that they
are studying a genuine historical document thatwas composed by someone
who had been an active participant in the events described. In short, he
seeks to create the illusion that what he is presenting to his readers is an
authentic manuscript that dates from theMiddle Ages.
In order to set about creating thismask of historicity, Eco prefaces his
novel with an account of how thismanuscript has apparently undergone a
number of translations and editions. What we are reading, we are in
formed, is an English translation of an Italian translation of a French
translation of a French edition of an original Latin manuscript which
appears to have been lost.While this tortuous process undoubtedly lends
credence to the historical credentials of the document, it is a process which
also has a more direct epistemological significance. 'Real' historical manu
scripts, that is to say, are always open to a wide variety of divergent
interpretations. By suggesting that his manuscript has been subject to a
number of translations and editions, Eco subtly implies that it too isopen to
a variety of speculations regarding its 'true'meaning. In good Quineian
fashion he has created a situation that permits a number of interpretations
and conjectures about the nature of the text to be made.
Ifwe grant for a moment that Eco has indeed managed to weave a mask
that will permit him to narrate in theMiddle Ages, then we must now ask
what form this narration will assume. The central concern here, according
to Eco, is to "construct a world" within which the tale will develop and
unfold. In his Postscript to theName of theRose Eco describes this concern in
the following way.

What Imean is that to tell a story you must firstof all construct a
world, furnished as much as possible, down to the slightest details.
If Iwere to construct a river, Iwould need two banks; and ifon the
leftbank I put a fisherman, and if I were to give this fisherman a

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 172 DAVIDBAXTER

wrathful character and a police record, then I could startwriting,

translating into words everything that would inevitably happen.
What does a fisherman do? He fishes (and thence a whole sequence
of actions, more or less obligatory). And then what happens? Either
the fish are biting or they are not. If they bit, the fisherman catches
them and then goes home happy. End of story.Perhaps he will break
his fishing rod. This isnot much; still, it is already a sketch.
But there is an Indian proverb that goes, "Sit on the bank of a river
and wait: your enemy's corpse will soon float by." And what if a
corpse were to come down the stream?since this possibility is
inherent in an intertextual area a
like river?We must also bear in
mind that my fisherman has a police record. Will he want to risk
trouble?What will he he run away and pretend not to have
do?Will
seen the corpse? Will he feel vulnerable, because this, after all, is
the corpse of theman he hated? Wrathful as he is,will he fly into a
rage because he was not able to wreak personally his longed-for
vengeance? As you see, as soon as one's invented world has been
furnished just a little, already there is the beginning of a story.
There is already the beginning of a style, too, because a fisherman
who is fishing should establish a slow, fluvial pace, cadenced by his
waiting, which should be patient but marked also by the fits of his
impatient wrath. The problem is to construct theworld?the words
will practically come on their own."4

Let us briefly consider a few of the parameters that influenced the

construction of Eco's medieval world. To begin with we are told that the
events that are described take place in 1327. It so happens that Eco's own
academic interest in this period actually focuses on the late 12th and early
13th centuries. Why then did he situate his novel at a later date? For one
reason, itwas during the 14th century that the Franciscan monk Roger
Bacon developed a specific theory of observation and investigation. In
addition, a theory of the interpretation of signs, which would allow one to
acquire a knowledge of individual, concrete existing objects in the world
(as opposed only to abstract universals), only came to be systematized in the
work ofWilliam ofOccam.
Why, however, should he insist that the events take place inNovember
1327? There are two reasons for this. First, by December of that year,
Michael ofCesana, Friar-General of the Franciscan Order, was inAvignon
locked indebate with Pope JohnXXII over the question ofChrist's poverty.
This issue adds an important political and historical dimension to the

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 THENAMEOF THE ROSE 173

novel. Secondly, theApocalyptic theme that runs throughout The Name of

the Rose required, for Eco, that the body of one murdered monk be
discovered in a barrel of pig's blood. His enquiries revealed, however, that
pigs are only slaughtered and their blood stored during the winter months
(blood, apparently, does not coagulate in cold weather). The average
temperature inNorthern Italy inNovember is actually too high to permit
this process to take place unless, of course, the abbey is set in the moun
tains.5

Important as the task isof creating the parameters of a medieval world it

is equally important, according to Eco, to tryand create a specific type of
reader as well. There are, in fact, two categories of reader that may be
identified. First, there are what Eco terms 'naive' readers. Readers in this
category are concerned solely with the bare, rigid structure of the text.
They lack both a sense of humor and, more importantly, an appreciation of
the rich and complex multiplicity of levels ofmeaning in the text. Naive
readers, in short, read The Name of theRose only as an exciting, mystery
thriller. Secondly, however, there are what Eco calls 'civilized' readers.
Readers who fall under this designation are in the first instance concerned
with de-coding and identifying the full philosophical, political, and re
ligiousmeaning of the text. They appreciate the subtlety and humor of the
text and, as Eco puts it, are 'obsessed' with revealing the whole "meta
linguistic and metanarrative game."6
It is important to note that there isno clear cut distinction to be made
between these two categories of readers. On the contrary, Eco explicitly
states that there are a number of various approaches which may be taken in
reading this text and which are based on different combinations of naive
and civilized reading. Each of these paths cannot be compared in terms of
'right'or 'wrong'. Rather, the only good or 'correct' reading will be one that
isbased on the conscious awareness that both a naive and civilized reading
of the textmay be made.7 More precisely, such a reading will be carried out
in the light of an awareness of the concept of 'intertextuality'.8
This concept simply refers to the fact that The Name of the Rose is
composed of a number of distinct but interrelated levels of meaning. For
example, the first step up from a 'strictly'naive reading is the realization
that the text is something more than just another detective thriller.That is
to say, we must seek to identify and interpret the similarities that are
alluded to between Eco's two heroes, William of Baskerville and Adso of
Melk, and Arthur Conan Doyle's investigative duo, Sherlock Holmes and
Dr. Watson.

The most obvious similarity, perhaps, is between William's name and

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 174 DAVIDBAXTER

Conan Doyle's tale about the famous Cornish hound. In addition, the
former's physical and personal characteristics (he is described as tall and
thin, as sitting for hours in silent contemplation considering the case, as
chewing a mysterious root in order to calm his nerves and so forth) all
closely resemble the description and activities that are attributed to Sher
lock Holmes. Similarly, both Adso and Dr. Watson faithfully record the
activities of their friends, both are romantically inclined and both attempt,
with the same lack of success, to imitate their colleagues' reasoning powers.
Even Adso's name is composed of the middle four phonemes ofWatson.
There are other close parallels as well. For instance, we are told that
William originally came from a land situated "between Hibernia and
Northumberland." Inmedieval times that description traditionally referred
to Scotland, an allusion, perhaps, to the fact thatConan Doyle was born in
Edinburgh.9 In The Name of theRose each of the dead monks is found to
have a black discoloration on the tips of his fingers. From this factWilliam
eventually comes to the conclusion that each of them had come into
contact with the "lost book." Similarly, in a tale entitled, A Scandal in
Bohemia, Holmes concludes from the fact that the tips ofWatson's fingers
have a black discoloration to them that the latter has been working with
silver nitrate and has hence re-established his medical practice.10
The most obvious similarity between William of Baskerville and Sher
lock Holmes, of course, is that both men are detectives. Now Eco is very
interested in the logical status of the practice of detective investigation and
in an article entitled, Horns, Hooves, Insteps, he sets out to analyze Conan
Doyle's claim that his hero, Sherlock Holmes, employs the 'science of
deduction' in order to solve his cases.11 Eco suggests that there is a
particularly good example of thismethodology in the story,The Sign ofFour

"For example, observation shows me that you have been to the

Wigmore Street Post Office this morning, but deduction letsme
know that when there you dispatched a telegram."
"Right!" said I. "Right on both points! But I confess that I don't
see how you arrived at it. Itwas a sudden impulse upon my part, and
I have mentioned it to no one."
"It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my surprise?
"so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it
may serve to define the limits of observation and deduction. Obser
vation tellsme that you have a little reddish mould adhering to your
instep. Justopposite theWigmore Street Office they have taken up

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 THENAMEOF THE ROSE 175

the pavement and thrown up some earth, which lies in such a way
that it isdifficult to avoid treading in it in entering. The earth isof
this peculiar reddish tintwhich is found, as far as I know, nowhere
else in the neighbourhood. So much is observation. The rest is
deduction."

"How, then, did you deduce the telegram?"

"Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I
sat opposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk there
that you have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of postcards.
What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire?
Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the
truth."

"In this case itcertainly is so," I replied, after a little thought."12

Clearly, Conan Doyle intended to suggest that his detective was employ
ing a syllogism of the following kind:

Premise (1): Men who enter the post-office will always get red
mould on their shoes.
Premise (2): Dr. Watson has redmould on his shoes.

Conclusion: Therefore, Dr. Watson has entered the post-office.

As an example of'deductive logic', of course, this example leaves a great

deal to be desired. As any firstyear undergraduate could tell you, this
syllogism is invalid for the simple reason that the redmould could equally
well have adhered toWatson's shoes as he was walking past the post-office.
In other words, this syllogismwould only be valid ifthe firstpremise had the
form: "All those and only those people who enter the post-office will have
red mould adhering to their shoes." Similarly, Holmes' 'deduction' that
Watson entered the post-office to dispatch a telegram would only be valid if
there were only three reasons to enter a post-office (that is, to send
telegrams, buy stamps or post letters). In that case, Holmes' elimination of
the last twowould leave the former as the only possible motive for
Watson's
actions. Once again, however, other considerations may have prompted
Watson's visit, for instance, he may have wanted to shelter from the rain,
visit an old friend and so forth.13
Although Holmes is not employing deductive logic to account for
Watson's movements and actions, what he isdoing, according to Eco, is to

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 176 DAVIDBAXTER

engage in a method of reasoning called 'abduction'. Eco defines abduction

as, "the provisional entertainment of an explanatory inference for the sake
of further testing."14 That is to say, according to this mode of reasoning
there are no indubitable truths due to the fact that both the general rule
(premise 1) and the particular conclusion are only ever held tentatively.
All conjectures and hypotheses are open to confirmation or refutation on
the basis of further evidence. William of Baskerville describes this process
of abduction when he says:

. . .
Adso solving a mystery isnot the same as deducing from first
principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of
particular data from which to infera general law. Itmeans, rather,
facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing
in common, and trying to imagine whether they could represent so
many instances of a general law you don't yet know, and which
perhaps has never been pronounced.15

Immediately following this statement, William presents Adso with

what, at firstsight at least, appears to be a rather strange example of this
process concerning animals, horns, and stomachs. In fact, this is an
extremely important passage for the example that is discussed has been
taken fromAristotle's On theParts ofAnimals. This is to say, Eco wishes to
demonstrate how Aristotle (the 'master of those who know') attempted,
twenty-three centuries ago, to describe the scientificmethod of abduction.
Eco actually begins with a quotation fromAristotle's PosteriorAnalytics
where this example is first introduced. Aristotle writes:

We are now using the traditional class names, but we must not
confine ourselves to these in our inquiry;we must collect any other
observed characteristic, and then consider with what species it is
connected, and what properties it entails. For example, in the case
of horned animals, the possession of a third stomach and a single
row of teeth. Since these animals clearly possess these attributes
because they have horns, the question is: "what species of animals
have the property of possessing horns?"16

Aristotle, inother words, isconcerned to discover the sortsof division that

have to be made between different things in order that a correct definition
can be given of them. In order to achieve such a definition, he goes onto
suggest, it isnecessary to provide both an account of that things genus and a

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 THE NAME OF THE ROSE 111

differentiaspecifica.The resulting combination of these two aspects will be

sufficient to define any particular species.
It is important to note that thismode of definition proposed byAristotle
only suggestswhat a thing is,not that that thing actually exists.However, he
proceeds to point out that ifwe can tell what a thing is then this implies
that we can describe why it is so. That is,we are in a position to circum
scribe the cause of that thing's particular featureswhich in turnwill allow us
to make a further deduction that will allow us to infer the material,
concrete existence of that thing in the world.
The information collected byAristotle which he believes relevant to the
definition of horned animals is summarized by Eco in the following way:

a) All horned animals have a single row of teeth, that is, they lack
upper incisors.

b) Animals without horns have some other means of defense. This

holds foranimals with teeth or fangs, but also for the camel which is
protected by its large body.
c) All horned animals have four stomachs.
d) Not every animal with four stomachs is horned (for example,
camels).

e) All animals with four stomachs lack upper incisors.17

In order to explain all these facts which he has come up with, Aristotle
has to come up with a cause thatwould play the role of the special case in a
logical sequence such that itwill correspond to his definition of horned
animals. In other words, he is looking for an hypothesis that would be able
"to substitute for a great series of predicates, forming no unity in them
selves, a single one which involves all of them."18
InOn theParts ofAnimals, Aristotle puts forward a fewproposals thatwill
help to explain this connection. For example, (1) in animals that require
protection, the hard material for their horns isprovided at the expense of
the upper incisors in their jaws. Horns, that is to say, cause the absence of
upper teeth in some animals. (2) Regarding the relation between the lack
of upper incisors and the existence in these animals of a third and fourth
stomach, Aristotle suggests that (a) the absence of incisors produces the
formation of extra stomachs so that these animals can ruminate on what
they do not chew enough, and (b), the growth of extra stomachs releases
the upper incisors from any useful function and thus causes them to
disappear.

Roughly speaking, there seems to exist forAristotle the following com

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 178 DAVIDBAXTER

bination of causes and effects.The need forprotection is the cause of horns;

horns, in turn, are the cause of the deflection of hard material from the
upper jaw to the head; this deflection is the cause of the lack of teeth in the
upper jaw; and, finally, the lack of teeth is the cause of the growth of extra
stomachs.

According to Eco, forAristotle to explain why all horned animals lack

upper incisors he firsthypothesized some general rule, so that if the result
that he wants turns out to be a special case of that rule then he will have
arrived at a correct definition of horned animals. Aristotle in fact suggests
that horned animals are those animals (genus) which have deflected the
hard matter from their upper jaws to their head (differentiaspecifica). This
enables him to construct the following syllogism:

Premise (1): All deflecting animals lack upper incisors.

Premise (2): Horned animals deflect.

Conclusion: Therefore, all horned animals lack upper incisors.19

This observation will be allowed to stand until we come across an animal

that has both horns and upper incisors. (Aristotle does have some trouble
with the apparent counter-example of camels who, apparently, lack upper
incisors but who have no horns. He allows his syllogism to stand, however,
on the grounds that although camels do not have horns they save the
deflected material and transform it into cartilage in their upper jaws. His
justification for this is that camels eat thorny food.)
Aristotle follows a similar process of reasoning to explain the phenome
non of the extra stomachs. He suspects that this is somehow linked to the
lack of upper incisors in the jaw and so he suggests that, "ruminants are
those animals with a special digestive apparatus because they lack incisors
in the upper jaw." This permits him eventually to construct the following
syllogism:

Premise (1): All animals lacking upper incisors have a special

digestive apparatus.
Premise (2): All ruminants lack upper incisors.

Conclusion: Therefore, all ruminants have a special digestive ap

paratus.20

Eco now argues that the type of definition provided byAristotle, that is,
showing what a thing isby explaining why it is theway it is, isan instance of

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 THENAMEOF THE ROSE 179

the process of scientific reasoning known as abduction. As we shall now

see, it is thismethodology that underlies William of Baskerville's attempts
to solve the mysterious series of murders in the abbey.
We shall look at two examples of thismethodology as it is applied inThe
Name of theRose, one successful and one not so successful. Let us begin with
the opening demonstration ofWilliam's detective abilities, his description
and location of the abbot's runaway horse Brunellus.21 According to Eco,
there are four stages or steps in themaking of a correct abduction. The first
stage, which involves the collection of raw data and individual facts, is
termed the stage of "Overcoded Abduction."22 The purpose of this stage is
to study the particular characteristics of things and objects in the world
prior to attempting to ascertain whether there are any general relations of
signification among them.
William begins by stating that he had recognized certain imprints in the
snow as the tracks of a horse. From this he can relate to a possible physical
cause, that is, 'a horse passed this way'. He has not as yet identified any
particular horse (in this case the abbot's horse Brunellus) but his recogni
tion of the tracks in the snow does allow him tomake a distinction between
genus and species. It is not just any' horse that has left the tracks behind
him, but rather, it is a horse with a certain nature. As William says:

Neatly spaced, these marks said that the hoof was small and round,
and the gallop quite regular?and so I deduced the nature of the
horse, and the fact that itwas not running wildly like a crazed
animal.23

In other words, itwas a well-bred, well-proportioned stallion.

At this point Eco introduces two semiotic categories that will allow us to
differentiate among various types of physical cause. The firstof these,
which he calls "symptoms," are characterized by the fact that they have no
immediately identifiable point to point correspondence between their
physical manifestation and their cause. In other words, the observed data
tells us that something caused that particular effect to occur although we
cannot immediately identifywhat that particular cause is. For instance,
William states that "At the point where the pines formed a natural roof,
some twigshad been freshlybroken off at a height of five feet."24 That is to
say, although the twigs do tell us that something caused them to break
something other than a horse may have been that cause.
The second semiotic category introduced by Eco are called "clues."
Clues are objects leftby an agent at a place where that agent did something.

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 180 DAVIDBAXTER

Moreover, they are so constituted that we may recognize that the objects
that have been leftby the agent are in some way physically linked to that
agent. What clues did William spot? Eco writes:

"One of the blackberry bushes where the animal must have turned
to take the path to his right, proudly switching his handsome tail,
still held some long black horsehairs in itsbrambles."25

In other words, the type of hair that remained entangled in the bushes
permitted William to make the positive identification that of all the
animals that could have passed thatway that animal, in this instance, was a
horse.

The second stage of this process involves, what Eco terms, themaking of
an "Undercoded Abduction."26 The point here is to attempt to identifyor
establish a coherent relationship among the discrete facts that have so far
been observed. What we are tentatively looking for, that is to say, is a
general rule which, selected from a number of possible alternative general
rules, allows us to explain the imprints, symptoms, and clues that have
been established in the most plausible manner. We are not, of course,
certain at this stage whether this is in fact the 'correct' general rule;
however, itwill sufficeuntil furtherdata comes to light thatwill cause us to
alter that rule.As it so happens, in the case of Brunellus, this 'temporary' or
'preliminary' abduction on the part ofWilliam (that is, that a well-bred,
well-proportioned stallion of a certain height and color passed by a certain
point traveling in a certain direction) does turn out to be the correct one.
The third stage of the process, called "Creative Abduction", involves
the refining of this rule or story line.27 This stage takes into account any
other knowledge that we might have that is pertinent to the case (that is,
information not provided by imprints, symptoms, and clues) as well as a
consideration of such aspects of a theory as the principle of economy and
aesthetics. For example, when asked by Adso how he had managed to
describe the horse so accurately William replies:

"I am not sure he has those features, but no doubt themonks firmly
believe he does. As Isidore of Seville said, the beauty of a horse
. . . short and
requires 'that the head be small pointed ears, big
eyes, flaring nostrils, erect neck, thick mane and tail, round and
solid hoofs.' If the horse whose passing I inferredhad not been the
finestof the stables, stableboys would have been out chasing him,
but instead, the cellarer in person had undertaken the search. And

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 THENAMEOF THE ROSE 181

a monk who considers a horse excellent, whatever his natural

forms, can only see him as the auctoritates have described him,
. . . the describer is a learned Benedictine."
especially if
"All right," I said, "but why Brunellus?"
"May the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind son!" my master ex
claimed. "What other name could he possibly have? Why, even the
great Buridan . . .when he wants to use a horse inone of his logical
examples, always calls itBrunellus."28

Before turning to examine the fourth and final stage in the process of
abduction, let us briefly digress to the example from the Sherlock Holmes
tale The Sign of Four to which we referred earlier. We already know why
Holmes' account of his friend's activities is not an example of deductive
logic. It is, however, an example (albeit a rather weak one) of abduction.
Holmes' firstabduction is overcoded; that is to say, he observes that
people with mud on their shoes have been to a street that is unpaved. In
establishing thatWatson has been toWigmore Street, Holmes makes an
undercoded abduction because it is there that the earth has a reddish tint to
it. So far so good. When it comes to the process of creative abduction,
however, many possible story lines suggest themselves. Why not imagine,
for example, thatWatson had taken a cab and went somewhere outside of
the immediate neighbourhood to another district where red earth abounds?
Holmes selected Wigmore Street because it contained the closest post
office to Baker Street and hence this supposition served to satisfy the
important theoretical criteria of economy.
Holmes also had to show thatWatson actually entered the post-office in
order to send a telegram. Here the process of abduction is at itsweakest for,
as Eco points out, the state of Holmes' world-knowledge actually acts
against that supposition. Holmes tells us thathe knew that his friend did not
require any stamps or postcards. As such, in order to arrive at the last
possibility (that Watson went to send a telegram) then it seems that
Holmes would need to have previously decided that thatwas the intention
behind Watson's visit to the post-office. In other words, Holmes has to
assume thatWatson was a regular visitor to the post-office because only on
this condition can the existence of stamps and postcards onWatson's desk
be taken as evidence of the fact thatWatson went toWigmore Street to
send a telegram. This is a veryweak creative abduction indeed although, as
Eco suggests, Conan Doyle and his readers doubtless believed it to be
justified in terms of its aesthetic elegance.29

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 182 DAVID BAXTER

The last stage in this process, which Eco terms "Meta-abduction",

consists in attempting to ascertain whether the possible world that has been
outlined by the three previous stages really corresponds to the world of our
actual experience.30 Meta-abductions, he tells us, "are frightening mat
ters."31Why this should be so given the fact that they are the only way,
according to Eco, inwhich we can hope to achieve a true grasp on reality is
not immediately obvious. Before attempting to explain what Eco is suggest
ing here we shall briefly examine another process of abduction that runs
through The Name of theRose, that which is concerned with tracing both
the motive and the perpetrator of the series of murders in the abbey.
Near the end of the book, William tellsAdso that he had discovered that
of
Jorge Burgos was the guilty party through a train of reasoning thatwas in
factmistaken. That is to say, although he had managed to identifycorrectly
many of the imprints, symptoms, and clues that he had come across in the
course of his investigation, William had been working all along with the
wrong creative abduction. The creative abduction he had employed was
based on the prophecy of the seven angels in the Book of Revelation. Each
monk had died in a way that appeared to fulfill the warning given in each
prophecy.32 However, despite the fact thatWilliam linked the deaths with
the prophecy of theApocalypse and with Jorge'sApocalyptic sermon in a
way that led him to conclude that the blind old man was ultimately
responsible for the deaths, this train of reasoning was actually only a red
herring. In fact, William admits that "There was no plot . . . and I
discovered it by mistake."33
In other words, the apparent connections between the death of the
monks and the deaths predicted in the Book of Revelation are only
meaningless coincidences. William says:

I have never doubted the truth of signs. Adso; they are the only
thingsman has with which to orient himself in the world. What I
did not understand was the relation among signs. I arrived at Jorge
through an apocalyptic pattern that seemed to underlie all the
crimes, and yet itwas accidental. I arrived at Jorge seeking one
criminal for all the crimes and we discovered that each crime was
committed by a different person, or by no one. I arrived at Jorge
no
pursuing the plan of a perverse and rational mind, and therewas
plan, or, rather, Jorge himself was overcome by his own initial
design and there began a sequence of causes, and concauses, and of
causes contradicting one another, which proceeded on their own,

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 THE NAMEOF THE ROSE 183

creating relations that did not stem from any plan. Where is all my
wisdom, then? I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order,
when I should have known well that there is no order in the
universe.34

It isWilliam's assertion "that there is no order in the universe" that

provides the key to an understanding of this novel. Individuals such as
Sherlock Holmes and Jorge of Burgos approach their understanding of the
world on the basis of the implicit assumption that a strict correlation exists
between the ordered structure of theirmental constructs and the ordered
structure of objects in the material world. People likeWilliam of Basker
ville and Umberto Eco, on the other hand, while never doubting that their
mental constructs possess order and clarity, are suspicious that that same
order and clarity is to be found in the structure of objects in the material
world. It is this (at least) potential disparity between our subjective inter
pretations of theworld and theworld's true, objective ordering which make
meta-abductions such "frightening matters."35 In order to grasp fullywhy
this is so, we must now turn to a consideration of what Eco once described
as the "important philosophical problem of laughter."36
At one point inThe Name of theRose we are informed that the manu
script thatwill turn out to be Aristotle's treatise on comedy has been bound
together with a number of other works, one of which is entitled, the
Exposito Magistri Alcofribae de coena bead Cypriani Cartaginensis Episcopi.
This work, we are informed, is a commentary on the pornographic and
satirical Coena Cypriani composed by 'MasterAlcofribas'. Now it isno mere
coincidence that 'Master Alcofribas' was the pseudonym under which in
1532 Francois Rabelais published his pornographic and satirical novels,
Gargantua and Pantagruel. This allusion to the work of Rabelais (who was
himself, incidentally, at one time a Franciscan monk) is very important
because itpermits Eco to enter into his novel a consideration of thework of
the Soviet philosopher and semiotician Mihail Bakhtin.
Bakhtin, like other intellectuals of the generation of 1917, was fasci
nated with attempting to conceptualize how the new perceptions of space
and time, which arose following the revolution, were related to the social
and economic conditions which then existed. According to Bakhtin,
social systemswere to be distinguished from one another by themanner in
which each conceived of the relationships of space and time and by the way
that these relationships were expressed inmaterial reality. (For example,
under the capitalist mode of production space has an economic value as

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 184 DAVIDBAXTER

property and time has an economic value of labour.) He further insisted,

however, that the specific forms inwhich these ideas of space and timewere
manifested (what he terms, "chrono topes") were themselves historically
relative. This methodology, he believed, allowed him to explain what the
whole experience of revolution had been about in the Soviet Union and at
the same time to offer the possibility that other, alternative conceptions to
the Stalinist chronotope (summed up in the term 'socialist realism') could
indeed be envisaged.37
In his most important book, entitled Rabelais and hisWorld, Bakhtin
attempted to present an historical demonstration of how such an alterna
tive chronotope could be explained. He focuses on Rabelais because the
latter shares his fascination with the notion of the breakdown of all
conventionally accepted boundaries in society and with 'unusual combina
tions', that is, the joining together innew ways of social features and events
that were formally quite disparate. Most importantly, both Rabelais and
Bakhtin believe that it is during these periods of breakdown that the
conditions become most favorable for a study of the relativity of cultural
systems and of the new ways inwhich individuals attempt to explain the
sort of society inwhich they live.
The specific medium through which Bakhtin attempts to analyze these
facets is the notion of 'carnival'. He emphasizes that themedieval carnival
constituted one of the few areas of lifewhere the influence and authority of
the church did not extend. Bakhtin suggests that carnival practices,

... do not command nor do they ask for anything. . . . All

(carnival) forms are systematically placed outside the church and
religiosity. They belong to a completely different sphere."38

As such, carnival isnot to be thought of as some sort of glorified national

a
holiday. On the contrary, it is a form of social activity that displaces for
period the hierarchies of domination and subordination that normally
mark society. Ithas the power to do this, according to Bakhtin, because of
itsorigins in popular culture and, in particular, 'folk-laughter'. In thisway,
carnival isone of the deepest and most characteristic expressions ofwhat it
is to be a human being. He writes:

No rest or breathing spell can be rendered festive per se . . .

(carnival is) . . . an important primary form of human culture.39

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 THENAMEOF THE ROSE 185

The chronotope which is called into existence during carnival seeks to

create a social order inwhich ordinary people experience a sense of freedom
that is absent from their normal daily existence. It is not a mere holiday
but, rather, it is a positive attempt to create the parameters of a new social
order. The extent of the alternative that is being postulated is revealed in
the attempts by official authority to bring carnival under their control. In
the power struggle that ensues, carnival laughter,

. . .builds itsown world inopposition to the official world, itsown

church versus the official church, its own state versus the official
state.40

For Bakhtin, the ultimate importance to Rabelais resides in his under

standing of political history. He writes:

Rabelais's basic goal was to destroy the official picture of events . . .

He summoned all the resources of popular imagery to break-up the
official ties and narrow sensuousness dictated by the ruling classes.
Rabelais did not implicitly believe what his time 'said and imagined'
about itself;he strove to disclose its truemeaning for the people.41

The attempt to laugh repression and domination off of the stage of world
history is not "merely metaphorical" for as Bakhtin writes "Every act of
world history was accompanied by a laughing chorus."42
The object around which William's investigations in the abbey are
ultimately revealed to revolve is the second book ofAristotle's Poetics, that
is, the part that concerns his discussion of laughter. In this book, Aristotle
is said to describe laughter as something that not only differentiates human
fromnon-human animals but, in addition, is a positive instrument of good.
However, when William asks Jorge "what frightened you in this discussion
of laughter," the latter replies that,

. . .
laughter isweakness, corruption, and foolishness of our flesh.
It is the peasant's entertainment, the drunkard's license; . . .
laughter remains base, a defense for the simple, a mystery dese
crated for the plebeians. The apostle also said asmuch: it isbetter to
marry than to burn. Rather than rebel against God's established
order, laugh and enjoy your foul parodies of order, at the end of the

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 186 DAVIDBAXTER

meal, after you have drained jugs and flasks. Elect the king of fools,
loose yourself in the liturgyof the ass and the pig, play at performing
your saturnalia head down . . . But here (pointing to Aristotle's
text) . . . the function of laughter is reversed, it is elevated to art,
the doors of theworld of the learned are opened to it, itbecomes the
. . .
object of philosophy, and of perfidious theology Laughter frees
the villein from fear of the Devil, because in the feast of fools the
Devil also appears poor and foolish, and therefore controllable. But
this book could teach that freeing oneself of fear of the Devil is
wisdom. When he laughs, as the wine gurgles in his throat, the
villein feels he ismaster, because he has overturned his position
with respect to his lord; but this book could teach learned men the
clever and, from thatmoment, illustrious artifices that could legit
imatize the reversal. Then what in the villein is still, fortunately, an
operation of the belly would be transformed into an operation of the
brain. That laughter is proper to man is a sign of our limitation,
sinners that we are. But from this book many corrupt minds like
yours would draw the extreme syllogism, whereby laughter isman's
end! Laughter, for a fewmoments, distracts the villein from fear.
But law is imposed by fear, whose true name is fear of God. This
book would strike the Luciferine spark that would set a new fire to
the whole world, and laughter would be defined as the new art,
unknown even to Prometheus for cancelling fear . . .And from
this book there could be born the new destructive aim to destroy
death through redemption from fear. And what would we be, we
sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the
most loving of the divine gifts? . . .The prudence of our fathers
made its choice: if laughter is the delight of the plebeians, the
license of the plebeians must be restrained and humiliated, and
intimidated by sternness . . .But ifone day somebody, brandishing
the words of the Philosopher and therefore speaking as a philoso
pher, were to raise theweapon of laughter to the condition of subtle
weapon, if the rhetoric of conviction were replaced by the rhetoric
ofmockery, ifthe topics of the patient construction of the images of
redemption were to be replaced by the topics of the impatient
dismantling and upsetting of every holy and venerable image?oh,
that day even you, William, and all your knowledge, would be
swept away!43

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 THE NAMEOF THE ROSE 187

Jorgeopposes Aristotle's treatise on laughter because itprovides a theo

retical foundation for a philosophical analysis of that which isproper only
to the stomach. In his last act, Jorge symbolically eats Aristotle's manu
script on comedy thereby rightfullyrestoring to the belly thatwhich was in
danger of being appropriated by themind. In amasterful moment, Eco tells
us thatwith the yellow slime dripping fromhis lips Jorge, for the only time
in the book, laughs. In a pivotal passage, William then goes onto explain to
Adso:

In that face, deformed by hatred of philosophy, I saw for the first

time the portrait of the Antichrist, who does not come from the
tribe of Judas, as his heralds have it, or from a far country. The
Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love ofGod
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, foras a rule theymake many others die with them,
often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical
thing because he loved his truth so lewdly that he dared anything in
order to destroy falsehood. Jorgefeared the second book ofAristotle
because itperhaps really did teach how to distort the face of every
truth, so thatwe would not become slaves of our ghosts. Perhaps the
mission of those who love mankind is tomake people laugh at the
truth, tomake truthlaugh, because the only truth lies in learning to
free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.44

There is an unfortunate tendency to view the struggle between William

and Jorge in terms of a confrontation between the 'modern', rational man
of science and the reactionary, orthodox man of the cloth with the former,
after-many vicissitudes and setbacks, eventually 'winning-out'. Eco him
self, however, warns us that such an interpretation is not correct. As he
dies, Jorge says: "This old man, by theGrace ofGod, wins once more, does
he not?"45 Aristotle's treatise on comedy has been destroyed and with ithas
been lost the opportunity to develop a strategy that would help overcome
the hierarchical structures of authority and official 'truth' that Jorgehad so
fanatically defended. The people's 'laughing chorus' has no object around
which to challenge these structures and as a result isonce more reduced to
silence.

Yet this isnot only a tale about what happened six centuries ago. Eco is

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 188 DAVIDBAXTER

acutely aware that we too live in apocalyptic times and that we are also
dominated by a group that displays a similar 'insane passion for the truth'.
These persons no longer come from the church, rather, they belong to a
scientific and technological establishment that displays the same unbend
ing faith and certainty in itsmodes of thought and technical achievements
as Jorge ever did inhis. It too has created a hierarchical structure that cares
little for the genuine needs and aspirations of the people at large. The
chronotope that provides the current framework for our conception of
reality has no place for the laughing scientists and it is significant perhaps
that the only time they are ever portrayed as laughing iswhen they are
represented as being either mad or insane.
If the Beast ever does come amongst us in the form of a nuclear or
ecological disaster, then a great deal more than 'the greatest library in
Chrisendom' will be destroyed. It is the greatness ofThe Name of theRose to
have warned us of the danger, it isnow up to us to appropriate its lesson.

University of Guelph

NOTES
1. Sir Arthur ConanDoyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books Ltd., 1986) p. 32.
2. Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of the Rose' (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1984) p. 13. All references toThe Name of theRose are taken from the paperback
edition (New York: Warner Books, 1984).
3. Postscript to lTheName of theRose', p. 14.
4. Postscript toThe Name of theRose, pp. 23-24.
5. See, Postscript to 'The Name of theRose\ p. 27.
6. Stefano Rosso, "A Correspondence with Umberto Eco," Boundary 2, vol. 12. no. 1.
Fall 1983,p. 8.
7. Rosso, pp. 7-8.
8. See, Pasi Falk, A rose is a rose is . . . Umberto Eco, theDouble Agent, Economy and
Society, vol. 14, no. 3. August 1985, p. 353.
9. At this stage one begins to wonder whether itwas simply a coincidence that Sean

Connery (who was himself born in Edinburgh) was chosen to play the role ofWilliam of
Baskerville in the film version of The Name of theRose.
10. For other similarities to the Holmes stories see Michael P. Carroll's review of The Name

of theRose inAmerican Anthropologist, vol. 86. no. 2. June 1984, pp. 432-34.
11. Horns, Hooves, Insteps: Some Hypotheses on Three Types ofAbduction, in The Sign of
Three, U. Eco and T. A. Sebeoked. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983) pp. 198?
220.
12. Horns, Hooves, Insteps, pp. 216-217. This example is also discussed inD. H. Richter,

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 THENAMEOF THE ROSE 189

"Eco's Echoes: Semiotic Theory and Detective Practice inThe Name of the Rose," Studies in
Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 10. no. 2. Spring 1986, pp. 213-236.
13. Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 217. See also, Richter, pp. 215-216.
14. Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 206.
15. The Name of theRose, p. 365.
16. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960) II 98a.
Quoted in, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 198.
17. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 200.
18. C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers ofCharles Sanders Peirce, ed. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and
A. W. Burks. 8 vols. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1935-1966) vol. 5, p. 276.
Quoted inHooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 200.
19. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 201.
20. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 202.
21. See, The Name of theRose, pp. 17-20.
22. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, pp. 210-212.
23. The Name of theRose, p. 19.
24. The Name of theRose, p. 19.
25. The Name of theRose, p. 19.
26. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 213.
27. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, pp. 215-217.
28. The Name of theRose, pp. 19-20.
29. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 217.
30. See, Hooves, Horns, Insteps, pp. 217-219.
31. Hooves, Horns, Insteps, p. 219.
32. See, The Book of Revelation, 8:6-10:10. In the prophecy of the seventh angel (which

corresponds to Jorge's death) we read:

And Iwent unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said
unto me, Take it, and eat itup; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy
mouth sweet as honey.

And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and itwas inmy
mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it,my belly was made bitter. (10:9?
10:10)
33. The Name of theRose, p. 599.
34. The Name of theRose, p. 599.
35. See, Richter, p. 219.
36. Eco, quoted in Falk, p. 358.
37. See, M. Holquist, "Bakhtin and Rabelais: Theory as Praxis," Boundary 2, vol. 11., no.
1., Fall 1983, pp. 5-19.
38. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and hisWorld (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968) p. 7.
39. Bakhtin, p. 8.
40. Bakhtin, p. 88.
41. Bakhtin, p. 439.
42. Bakhtin, p. 474.
43. The Name of theRose, pp. 576-579.
44. The Name of theRose, p. 598.
45. The Name of theRose, p. 585.

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