Rowlings, Eco, and the licitness of laughter ( was Lupin vs Snape)

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 157476

Renee:

> As for fitting the evidence, in Eco's Name of the Rose, 
> all the evidence fits William of Baskerville's theory 
> about they abbey murders and yet he turns out to be wrong.

houyhnhnm:

I suppose I had better put in a little SPOILER SPACE for 
_The Name of the Rose_, although I don't think it is 
possible to spoil this book.  I just finished it for 
the fifth time (the first since reading the Harry Potter books).
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William says, "there was no plot and I discovered it by 
mistake" but I think it is his despair talking after the 
burning of the library.  He was not wrong about much.  
He was not wrong in believing that "Everything turns on 
the theft and possession of a book". He was not wrong in 
suspecting that Jorge was involved (even though he didn't 
believe Jorge physically capable of the murders) He 
suspected poison early on and had prepared himself with 
gloves for the final confrontation. 

William's ability to read "signs and the signs of signs" 
"to seek a design" is testified to by 1) describing Brunellus 
2) deducing that Abo did not regard Adelmo's death as a 
suicide 3) recognizing herbs in winter from the bare bush 
4) deciphering Venantius' code 5) reconstructing the design 
of the library from the outside 6) anticipating what 
Aristotle would have to say about comedy before he read 
the manuscript.  I don't think William of Baskerville is a good 
example of someone who sees patterns where they don't exist.

It just doesn't seem to me that William was diverted from 
the truth that much by the apparent apocalyptic pattern of 
the murders.  It was Jorge who really came to believe so, 
that the whole story proceeded according to a divine plan, 
in order to conceal from himself that he was a murderer.

William says to Jorge, "Naturally, as the idea of this 
book and its venomous power began to take shape, the idea 
of an apocalyptic pattern began to collapse, though I 
couldn't understand how both the book and the sequence 
of trumpets pointed to you."

Not that William doesn't make mistakes.

"And you," [Adso] said with childish impertinence, "never 
commit error?"

"Often," [William] answered, "But instead of conceiving 
only one, I imagine many, so I become the slave of none."

Very Dumbledorian is William of Baskerville, it seems to me.  
He even swears by Merlin's beard!

Unicorns, basilisks, and centaurs!  Dittany, hellebore, 
and Mandragora!  Not to mention a brother herbalist (and 
potioneer) called Severinus, and a reference to al-Razi's 
identification of amorous melancholy with lycanthropy!  
I am surprised we have not seen _The Name of the Rose_ 
on any of Rowling's book shelves or book lists.

But it is the theme of the licitness of laughter and the 
enjoyment of monstrosities which runs through _The Name of 
the Rose_ that really made me think of the Harry Potter 
books, those who criticise and defend them.  

Jorge asks, "What is the meaning of those ridiculous 
grotesques, those monstrous shapes and shapely monsters?  ... 
Those lions, those centaurs, those half human creatures, 
with mouths in their bellies, with single feet, ears like 
sails? ... Quadrupeds with serpent's tails, and fish with 
quadrupeds' faces, and here an animal who seems a horse in 
front and a ram behind, and there a horse with horns, and 
so on ...."

Jorge decries laughter because "he who laughs does not 
believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it.  
Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to 
combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power 
through which good is self propagating."

And "Aristotle"'s (Eco, that is, as Pseudo Aristotle) answer, 
as paraphrased by William is that "the tendency to laughter 
[is] a force for good, which can also have instructive value; 
through witty riddles and unexpected metaphors, though it 
tells us things differently from the way they are, it 
actually obliges us to examine them more closely, and makes 
us say: Ah, this is just how things are, and I didn't know it.  
Truth reached by depicting men and the world as worse than 
they are or than we believe them to be, worse in any case 
than the epics, the tragedies, lives of the saints have 
shown them to us."