sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (05/28/84)
Have any of you out there read "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco?
I have been waiting for this to come out in paperback for the past year,
and it's finally arrived for the summer vacation reading season.
This is a dazzling, erudite work which can be appreciated on many levels.
It has the form of a detective story set in the 14th century in an Italian
monastery, wherein a Franciscan monk from Britain and his young assistant
attempt to uncover the secrets of a series of murders. It is a page-turner
in the tradition of most best-sellers, but there is real meat on the old
bones of the murder mystery genre. The morals and mores of the 14th century
are made suffocatingly real, as we experience how these people actually
think, and the book delves into all sorts of interesting issues about the
nature of truth, orthodoxy and intellectual freedom. This is the kind of
book which can be read profitably more than once--first for the fun of the
mystery, and later for the subtleties of the text.
I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say who've read it.
I've doubtless missed many points on my first pass through the book.
--
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPAgb@cornell.UUCP (05/28/84)
The book is full with literary puns amd allusions.
The most obvious one is of the detective monk Baskervill (Sherlock Holmes)
and his assistant Edso (Watson ).
There is also a blind librarian - Jorge of Burgus,which corresponds to
Jorge Louis Borges, an argentinian writer who used to be a librarian, is
blind, and wrote short stories about libraries, labyrinths and heresies.
Did anyone find other references .
Gabi Brachawetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) (05/29/84)
[] I can reccommend this one to one and all. A great book be ye religious or not. T. C. Wheeler
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (06/05/84)
Truly a good and enjoyable book (the two are not always synonymous). One annoyance I had with the translation into English (I have no idea if it was this way in the original, so I will not blame the author) -- there are many inclusions in Latin, and SOME of them are translated into English, but some are not. (Usually the method is that a character states something in the Latin and it is then followed by a version in English, as if the character was explaining or elaborating on his statement. It is a much smoother method than using footnotes.) Anyway, if some are translated, ALL should be. My Latin is over 20 years rusty, and most readers will have less than that. If it isn't worth translating, it isn't worth including, and if it is worth including, it is worth making sure that the information is accessible to all readers. This doesn't apply to standard phrases, or something used more for effect than for content (such as a transcription of a chant during a service), but it does apply to dialog. There would be a special exception made for a certain character in this book who speaks in a mingled jumble of Latin and local dialect, where the nature of the jumbled words is important to the characterization. Will
nosmo@pyuxqq.UUCP (P Valdata) (06/28/84)
Sorry if this got posted twice anywhere, but can anyone translate the last line of The Name of the Rose for me? It's been a long time since I studied Latin. Please mail replies to pyuxqq!nosmo. Gracia! Pat Valdata