As the mystery begins to unravel it becomes clear that the source of the conspiracy is related to the abbey’s mysterious library, which is described as the greatest in all of Christendom. The book is broken into seven parts (one for each day), and each day is broken into chapters corresponding to the canonical hours. When Adso presses to find out the source of William’s knowledge, he is told, in so many words, that it is a rather elementary deduction! When they arrive at the abbey, the abbot asks William to conduct an investigation into a monk who is assumed to have been murdered.Īs each day unfolds another monk is found dead and the urgency for the William and Adso duo to solve the murder increases. In the first scene with William, he deftly infers the that abbot’s horse has gone missing by observing tracks in the snow and broken branches. The reader soon becomes aware that William and Adso are a Holmes and Watson duo (if the Baskerville toponymic surname wasn’t enough of a clue). The parley is scheduled to take place in a week from William’s arrival at an abbey designated to be neutral ground in Italy. He is travelling under the tutelage of the senior Franciscan friar William of Baskerville who has been requested by the emperor to help adjudicate a dispute between Pope John XXII and various Franciscan sects over the issue of Apostolic poverty. The novel unfolds from the perspective of a Benedictine novice named Adso of Melk. Due to a complicated set of political circumstances, the papacy was actually located in Avignon in Southern France throughout most of the 1300s. The period marked a peak in the tension between the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, with ongoing disagreements about the separation between secular and religious affairs being adjudicated by force, if necessary.

The historic background is one of total corruption in European society with every strata of the religious hierarchy focused on personal gain rather than religious devotion. The Name of the Rose is set in 14th century in Italy at the peak of the High Middle Ages. These authors are all thoroughly postmodern and draw heavily on intertextuality (references to other works of literature). Eco’s writing style is similar to two of my other favourite authors: Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges. I went into reading The Name of the Rose with high expectations both because I had enjoyed one of Eco’s other works ( Baudalino) and because the novel is considered one of the author’s best.

Author of name of the rose