The book "The Name of the Rose" contains a lot of academic content and religious knowledge, and my own level is at the stage of "seeing the mountains as mountains, and seeing the water as water": when you see sect disputes, you pay attention to religion; Suo and the girl looked at their unending love; they would be very excited to see the long talk of the priest William at the end of the book; after reading the book, although he felt that the book was very good, he still couldn't figure it out, and gradually forgot the content. I recently watched the adaptation of the movie "The Name of the Rose". I remembered some of the content in the book. Although the theme is scattered, it is not unconnected. Why not try it out?
First of all, it is not just a detective novel (recognized, not to mention).
Second, it shows several contradictions. Some of these contradictions can overlap with each other, but some cannot.
1. Contradictions between denominations-Is Jesus poor?
The original text uses a lot of space to describe the division of sects, and in the context of the times in the text, it is the manifestation of theological thinking in the social contradictions caused by the Catholic and aristocratic classes. The main reason is probably that Christianity is not friendly to the rich; the church is exploiting the people; and the people generally believe in religion. Under these conditions, a sect that hated the wealthy emerged. It once set off a resistance movement (similar to the peasant uprisings in ancient China), but was later wiped out.
I can't remember the specific content of the book. There are two points about this in the film: people who used to be in the resistance movement who hid in the monastery after the failure of the movement, and the debate competition held in the monastery in the later period. But the movie doesn't dig deep into these, and the book is easy to be overlooked because of the large amount of information.
2. Class contradiction-the poverty of the people and the prosperity of the church
When you are studying, it is difficult to be impressed by the poverty of the people. At most, you will only notice that the girl who loves Alfonso commits herself to the cook in order to exchange food, and then feels sorry for the girl's death (at least I am). But the movie turned the poverty of the people into images, and the movie-goers felt more empathetic. In addition, the movie also added scenes of church throwing vegetables (distributing food) to the people and scenes of people gathering together and having fun (I saw it after Alfonso fell in love with the girl. I think this clip shows how miserable ordinary people are. It means the people's "laugh").
Needless to say how rich the church is, there are several shots at the back of the film about church treasures. The book also mentions the church’s basement, which contains countless treasures.
3. The contradiction between human nature and religion: love and abstinence
There is no doubt that Alfonso fell in love after having a good time with the girl. The book spent a lot of pen and ink describing Alfonso’s feelings, which made people have to admire the author’s writing. In the movie, the emotional exchange between Alfonso and the girl increased two or three times, and the girl's ending changed from being burned to being rescued. There is also a pair of homosexual monks in the book (here I think about Christian attitudes towards homosexuality), although they both died in the end.
The resurgence of love and desire in literature can be regarded as the vanguard of the Renaissance. I personally think that the reason is that when people focus more on self-satisfaction, they will weaken their belief in "noble" things to a certain extent, and even ignore this existence. Therefore, the contradiction between love and abstinence is only a manifestation of the contradiction between religion and human nature.
4. The contradictory laughter and fear between human nature and religion
This is mentioned extensively in the second half of the book, and it can be regarded as a clue throughout the film in the movie. The whole murder was derived from only one book—the second volume of Aristotle's Poetics, which is said to have written theories about comedy. The blind old monk thinks that this book justified the act of "laughing", which will make people contemptuous of God (the reason is that people don't think of God when they laugh). How to make people respectful toward God? The blind man thought there was only fear.
In the movie, the role of fear is given to religious judges, and the images also make people intuitively see the role of fear on religion. It is not so much that religious judges perform their duties and conduct trials, rather they are showing atrocities and creating fear.
5. Cruel religious trials and potentially innocent people
I have read some information that the time when religious trials were most rampant was actually in the late Catholicism. Therefore, the novel is quite in line with the facts. It was originally written that the glory of Catholicism is about to pass, and it highlights the absurd and cruel religious trial—innocent girls were tied to fire as witches.
The ending of the movie was changed, and the girl was rescued in a sudden fire. The judge who fled the monastery in a hurry was pushed down the cliff by the angry people with a carriage, and died miserably.
6. The contradiction between dogma and truth-the library was burned
First clarify a definition in the book: the monastery library is the greatest library in the entire Christian world. Therefore, the burning of the library symbolizes the incorrigibility of the entire Christian world. In order to destroy the philosopher's work, that is, the book of laughter, the blind old man lit a fire in the library (absolutely intentionally, the blind old man in the book served as the librarian for a long time). As the fire grew larger, the entire monastery was burned, and the monastery praised by William and Alfonso no longer existed. Judging from the ending, the killing of the apocalypse at the beginning makes sense.
In the Middle Ages, knowledge was basically monopolized by the church. Ancient Greek writings spread to Arabia, and then returned to medieval European monasteries where they were preserved. Philosophy was regarded as the maid of theology at that time, and the monastery also conducted philosophical research for the sake of God. The blind old man burned not only a library, but also a thousand years of wisdom.
Finally, if I want to pick out all kinds of contradictions in the text, I can pick a lot, but it is not necessary. This novel seems to have written everything, but after careful reflection, I can't come up with a clear theme. If I did not know that this book is very distinctive in terms of interpretation, I would think that the author is an unqualified novelist, with complicated academic knowledge, specious and generalized viewpoints, and there is only one bright line to find the murderer. The author used a large number of emotionally strong texts to give up the impact, and there is no sense of existence at all. The movie compressed the entire book to two or three hours, and also made some clues clearer.
Now that hermeneutics has developed to the reader's interpretation view, let's write about the subject of this book as the reader thinks (although the results may not match the author's original intention, I just sort out the contradictions listed above and find out what I think Theme of).
The theme is-the glory of Christianity has passed, and the dark ages will follow. Because the church is no longer the original church. It was originally the religion of the poor, but began to debate whether the church should be poor; the religion of love was so cruel to the believers, and she was tied up without even asking an interpreter for the testimony of the poor girl who only speaks in tongues. The torture frame; strenuous efforts to avoid the dark eschatology and to eliminate the "anti-Christ" (I can't remember what it was called) born people, but they ruined the future of Christianity in one hand; The name of the rose is the only one that the church has had countless fame, but when the glory of the past is gone, only the name of Christ is left.
All this is caused by those people: they are in the church, they are greedy, the people are fishy. They are cruel and punish dissidents. They are ignorant, even unable to tolerate the laughter of believers, just because laughter will dispel fear, and fear will strengthen faith. They think they are pious, but they are destroying their faith.
Summary: The author has a huge amount of knowledge, and the writing is really good, and the translation is also very good. After reading it, people always want to find the same type of monastic novels. The film adaptation also fits my heart, and the final ending is more promising: the girl is rescued and the judge dies. Will William and Alfonso move on as rational hope?
PS: The Christianity referred to in this article includes Catholicism. I don't know much about these things.
PPS: After reading the original work, the most profound feeling is that academics are really useful. You can see that the blind old man did not hesitate to kill or even set fire to burn Aristotle's poetics. This shows the power of thought. The original author is also a scholar. This book can be said to be a book of persuasion, at least it made me feel excited at the time.
PPPS: This book may be very successful in literary form or other aspects, but I don't have any relevant knowledge, I'm just writing my own opinions, don't like it.
View more about The Name of the Rose reviews
