Adso of Melk-narrator, Benedictine novice accompanying William.William of Baskerville- protagonist, a Franciscan friar.According to nominalism, universals are bare names: there is not a universal rose, only the name rose."-Sholem Stein "The title may also an allusion to the nominalist position in the problem of universals, taken by William of Ockham. I remember that Abelard used the example of the sentence " Nulla rosa est" to demonstrate how language can speak of both the nonexistent and the destroyed." postscript to The Name of the Rose But to the usual topos (the great of yesteryear, the once-famous cities, the lovely princesses: everything disappears into the void), Bernard adds that all these departed things leave (only, or at least) pure names behind them. I answer that the verse is from De contemptu mundi by Bernard of Morlay, a twelfth-century Benedictine, whose poem is a variation on the " ubi sunt" theme (most familiar in Villon's later "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan"). "Since the publication of The Name of the Rose I have received a number of letters from readers who want to know the meaning of the final Latin hexameter, and why this hexameter inspired the book's title. "Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith, because without fear of the Devil, there is no need of God." - Jorge de Burgos, explaining his hatred for comedy.
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