Archvillain or Scapegoat: René Girard visits the abbey of The Name of the Rose

Introduction

Antagonists are the plebeians of the story world. Often confined to that sphere of action, as Vladimir Propp (1968: 79) would put it, involving villainy, conflicts with the hero and pursuit. While narratives champion protagonists, the notorious ‘other’, the villain, is vanquished first by sword and then by word. It is readers and critics, as secondary writers, who often resurrect them from the dust of obscurity. In this vein, René Girard's theory of the scapegoat offers a theoretical framework for the deconstructive subversion of the text's chiaroscuro between hero and villain, good and evil, right and wrong. Revisiting the genealogy of the antagonist through the lens of mimetic violence and victimisation, Girard's theoretical framework is a conducive interpretative tool for giving the antagonist its due. Umberto Eco's magnum opus, The Name of the Rose, portrays his most compelling antagonist in Jorge of Burgos. He is depicted as the archvillain among the few secondary antagonists in the story. However, very few character studies have been conducted exclusively on him. This article delineates the contours of Girardian scapegoating, unravelling Jorge's role as a scapegoated antagonist, and finally contends that The Name of the Rose operates as a literary text of persecution.

René Girard: Mimesis, violence and scapegoats

René Girard (1923–2015) is more of a Berlinian hedgehog, possessing an idée fixe that enabled him to exert significant intellectual influence across a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, literary criticism, philosophy, sociology and theology. The foundational idea is an anthropological insight into the origins of culture, myth and religion through mimetic violence, reconciliatory scapegoating and their ritualistic re-enactment.

Girard discarded Rousseau's insistence on the intrinsic goodness and the Hobbesian innate selfishness in favour of the Hellenistic underpinning of mimesis as the constitutive element of culture. However, mimesis throughout history, starting with Plato, has been primarily understood as mimesis of apprenticeship, whereby individuals imitate the behaviours and speech of others to acquire essential skills that, in turn, enable socialisation and enculturation (Girard et al., 1987: 7–10). Girard's (Girard et al., 1987: 7–10, 15–18) premise is that not only human behaviour, but even our desires are mimetic, bringing to attention another facet of mimesis, that is, the mimesis of acquisition. He asserts that human desires are inherently imitative, as individuals tend to mimic the desires of others. Our desires are not determined by any inherent qualities of the object nor by a purely autonomous choice, but rather by the fact that others also desire the same object. In short, we desire something because others desire it. Hence, he defines mimetic desire as the one with ‘our neighbor is the model for our desires’ (Girard, 2001: 10). The mimetic desire is essentially mediated desire, as we follow another person's desire; they become a ‘mediator’ or ‘model’ for our desire. This mediation may be categorised as either external, where the model and the person are on different planes, or as internal, when both are proximate.

Acquisitive mimetics has the potential to become conflictual mimesis. Internal mediation, in which the mediator and the mediated are on the same level, can lead to rivalry, as both strive for the same goal. This rivalry will be further intensified as the appearance of a rival validates the desire; the immense value of the object desired (Girard, 2001: 10). This leads to an interesting dynamic interplay in which the spectacle of a person's desire reinforces that of the mediator's, while the mediator confronting the person further solidifies his own (Girard, 2001: 10). Subsequently, this form of mimetic rivalry engenders a metaphysical desire in which the person may eventually desire to become the mediator. Metaphysical desire drives a person not just to rivalry with their mediator; in fact, it leads to complete obsession with and resentment towards the mediator (Andrade, n.d.). Consequently, the contagious proliferation of internal mediation and metaphysical desire, as micro rivalries tend to multiply and coalesce within a community, results in violence. In fact, to that extreme where violence itself is mimicked and becomes conflictual mimesis. Accordingly, Girard states that ‘violence is supremely mimetic’ as it is ‘not originary’ but only a ‘by-product of mimetic rivalry’ (2000: 12–13).

Violence, chaos and mayhem caused by unchecked conflictual mimesis can tear apart the community, necessitating the adoption of reconciliatory measures. Amidst the rising violence, society often instinctively seeks a target for its collective hostility as a reconciliatory tactic. This process ultimately culminates in the scapegoat mechanism, whereby society designates a victim upon whom all accumulated aggression is collectively discharged.

Society's collective polarisation, often arbitrary and disproportionate, against a victim, is what makes someone a scapegoat. Actual innocence or guilt of the victim is secondary; in fact, Girard admits that at times ‘it is even possible that the crimes of which they are accused are real’ (1986: 17), but the deciding factor is the society's conviction of the victim as the ‘only active and responsible agent in the matter’ while claiming its own passivity (Girard et al., 1987: 27). Consequently, the hostility that jeopardised the community's fabric contributes to its cohesion. Girard notes:

Whereas mimetic appropriation is inevitably divisive, causing the contestants to fight over an object they cannot all appropriate together, mimetic antagonism is ultimately unitive, or rather reunitive since it provides the antagonists with an object they can really share, in the sense that they can all rush against that victim in order to destroy it or drive it away. (2000: 12)

Girard, unlike the social contractarians, recognises this social crisis and the resulting scapegoating as the foundational principle of culture. Once the crisis is attributed to the surrogate victim and the community's animosity is displaced and discharged either by the annihilation or expulsion of the scapegoat, ‘social harmony is reestablished and the development of culture becomes possible’ (Golsan, 2002: 31). However, this mechanism is not a one-time event; instead, communities periodically resort to scapegoating to ease social crises.

Religion, for Girard, traces its origin to a foundational scapegoat murder. The victim, initially a target, once murdered, becomes a symbol of reconciliation and restored peace and gradually is divinised. All the fundamental constituents of the religion can be explained from the perspective of scapegoating. Myths recount the original act of scapegoating from the persecutors’ point of view; rituals serve as symbolic re-enactments of that foundational murder, while taboos and prohibitions help prevent new social crises. Girard perceives Christianity and Jesus Christ as the epitome of this sacralisation of scapegoating. His theological project on Christianity proceeds further by building on this understanding.

Analysing the scapegoating process and its representation in myths reveals specific patterns that Girard terms ‘stereotypes of persecution’ (1986: 11). Initially, the stereotype of crisis in which the culture is facing dissolution is characterised by a lack of differentiation. This cultural eclipse turns out to be fundamentally a social crisis, which is often described in terms of social and moral causes. During moments of crisis, individuals, rather than acknowledging their role in social disintegration, tend to blame society – a relatively harmless option – or others who are susceptible for easily identifiable reasons (Girard, 1986: 14). Subsequently, the stereotype of accusation emerges, in which the social conflict is attributed to acts of violence (regicide, patricide), sexual crimes (rape, incest, bestiality) and various forms of sacrilege (host desecration, ritual murder) (Palaver, 2013: 185). Also noteworthy is that as centuries elapse and humanity progresses, the nature of accusations transforms from occult to more rational (Palaver, 2013: 186). Usually, these accusations are levelled against people who bear specific characteristics that earmark them as scapegoats. The stereotype of victim selection points out the traits associated with scapegoats like religious or cultural distinctions (ethnic or religious minorities, foreigners), physical attributes (handicaps, various deviations from the norm), gender (women), lack of protection (children) and prominent social positions (king, royalty, other forms of power) (Palaver, 2013: 186). Finally, the stereotype of violence, where, at the climax of the crisis, the community resorts to violence against individuals perceived as responsible, presumably scapegoats.

Girard suggests that evidence of scapegoating is present everywhere – in literary masterpieces, the rites and rituals of primitive peoples, and ultimately in myths themselves (Golsan, 2002: 38). Nonetheless, the dynamics of scapegoating often remain inconspicuous to public perception. This occurs because the textual re-presentation of crises in myths and other literary works typically takes place from the perspective of persecutors, disguising the underlying scapegoat mechanism. Conversely, he (Girard, 2000: 14–15) recognises that mythic systems of representation obliterate the scapegoating inherent within them, and they continue to depend on this obliteration. Girard primarily discusses two types of textual re-presentation and obfuscation related to scapegoating: myths and texts of persecution. The myth of Oedipus is examined as an example of the mythical text, while Guillaume de Machaut's Judgment of the King of Navarre from the 14th century serves as an example of the latter.

The texts of persecution are particularly of interest from a literary perspective. Girard defines them as ‘accounts of real violence, often collective, told from the perspective of the persecutors, and therefore influenced by characteristic distortions’ (1986: 9). Not all stereotypes need to be present; in fact, the juxtaposition of more than one stereotype is sufficient to identify a work as a text of persecution (Girard, 1986: 24). Scapegoats are manifested in these texts to varying degrees, serving as a basis for classifying the texts and their respective scapegoats. Girard initially categorises scapegoats as mythical and non-mythical. Mythical scapegoats are veiled in the text as it is written from the persecutors’ viewpoint. This type of scapegoats neither ‘can appear’ nor be ‘mentioned’ as such in the text, although they govern all the themes of the text (Girard, 1986: 118). On the contrary, the victimhood of non-mythical scapegoats is explicitly asserted within the text. However, Laura Barge (2001: 252), based on her conversation with René Girard, extends the spectrum with two subdivisions for each category – ‘purely mythical’ and ‘mythical but not pure’; ‘non-mythical but not pure’ and ‘purely non-mythical’. Within the category of the ‘mythical’ scapegoat, the ‘purely mythical’ scapegoat is either intentionally or unintentionally obscured by the author. Conversely, the not pure mythical scapegoat is portrayed by the author as a victim based on post-sacrificial understanding; however, the scapegoat remains unaware of its victimisation (Barge, 2001: 256). Under the category of ‘non-mythical’, the not pure non-mythical scapegoat, presented as a victim by the author and aware of its victimhood, rebels or refuses to participate in or acquiesce to victimisation (Barge, 2001: 259). Whereas the final subcategory of ‘purely non-mythical’ scapegoat neither resorts to refusal nor agrees with the persecutors (Barge, 2001: 263).

Rene Girard's scapegoat and literature

The algorithm of the scapegoat mechanism can be rightly summarised as mimetic desire leading to violence, originating from a chain reaction of internal mediation and metaphysical desire, ultimately bringing about a cultural and social crisis. As a countermeasure, the community singles out and designates a scapegoat, not necessarily unblemished, upon whom the entire aggression is focused. This scapegoat mechanism is often depicted in texts in a veiled manner, as they are written from the perspective of persecutors. Therefore, they are referred to as texts of persecution. The scapegoat mechanism and its textual re-presentations offer a proficient framework for analysing literary texts.

Far from being an overlooked approach, numerous scholars have drawn upon René Girard's theory to illuminate diverse literary traditions. For instance, Laura Barge (2001) employs the scapegoat framework in her study of Southern literature, while Roderick Cooke (2016) utilises it alongside the Derridean framework to analyse the works of French literary giants Guy de Maupassant and Émile Zola. American literature has proven a rich area for applying the Girardian framework, as classics such as William Faulkner's Sanctuary (Carson, 2016; Wilson, 2015) and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (Sayers, 2021) have been examined through the lens of scapegoat dynamics.

Beyond canonical Western literature, the concept has also informed readings of Indigenous narratives. Jean Anderson (2018), for example, discusses how characters in the works of James K. Baxter, Patricia Grace, and Moetai Brotherson embody the role of the scapegoat, demonstrating the adaptability of Girard's theory across cultural and narrative contexts. Literary works from different periods have also come under the lens of the scapegoat framework; some representatives would be Derek Cohen (2009) and David K. Anderson (2011) in their analysis of King Lear, while Victorian literature, particularly the works of George Eliot in Bernadette Waterman Ward's monograph (2022) on Eliot's novels, and Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, interpreted by Mark M. Hennelly (2001) and Kevin Rulo (2009). The framework has also been extended to modern and popular texts. Oliver Gerland (2011) applies it to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and Clinton Manley (2025) uses the model to analyse C. S. Lewis's Perelandra.

In synthesis, these studies demonstrate that the scapegoat mechanism provides not merely a robust theoretical framework for literary criticism but also serves as a versatile tool that traverses genres, historical periods and cultural boundaries. Furthermore, Girard himself favoured literature over philosophical discourse for a profound understanding of human behaviour, reflecting an intriguing hermeneutic perspective that aligns him with a cohort of thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida and Charles Taylor (Vanheeswijck, 2003: 96–97). Even in the analysis of The Name of the Rose, Girard's idea of scapegoating has been briefly used. However, Carl Rubino (1985) refers to Girard's theory only in passing while discussing cultural shifts, stopping short of offering a detailed engagement with the concept. These points taken together would validate a Girardian inquiry into Umberto Eco's magnum opus, The Name of the Rose.

The Name of the Rose: Acquitting Jorge of Burgos

Umberto Eco (1932–2016), a renowned literary theorist and author, in The Name of the Rose weaves a captivating murder mystery set within a 14th-century Benedictine abbey. Drenched in theological, philosophical and semiotic digressions, the novel satiated both academic and popular appetites. The reader follows William of Baskerville, a Holmesian protagonist, as he investigates the malevolent mind behind the series of murders in the abbey.

While exploring the novel's narrative woods, one may encounter several antagonists, such as Bernard Gui, the inquisitor. The primary antagonist who maintains the plot's coherence is the blind monk, Jorge of Burgos, whom the text accuses of murder and condemns for his intellectual obstinacy. The novel ‘depicts Jorge in sinister terms’ (Parker, 1990: 844), and the coup de grâce would be the text itself referring to Jorge as the ‘Antichrist’ (Eco, 1998: 491). The academic world also resonates with the idea of Jorge as the principal villain of the plot, labelling him as the ‘master-criminal’ (Nicol, 2009: 176), ‘architect of crimes’ (Rushing, 2005: 123), ‘Moriarty’ against the Holmesian hero (Bondanella, 2009: 98; Richter, 1997: 274), ‘villain of the novel’ (Rice, 2003: 353), ‘gothic element of horror’ (Vladiv-Glover, 2008: 60), ‘nemesis’ of the protagonist William (Glynn, 1997: 107), ‘lucifer or devil’ in Dantesque terms (Kolsky, 1993: 73), planning ‘macabre actions of murders’ (Rafique, 2020: 83). However, as Umberto Eco mentions in the novel, ‘books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry’ (1998: 316), and if so, the novel's seemingly warranted designation of Jorge as the unmirthful traditionalist, murderous archvillain is also open to critical inquiry.

The most apparent accusation against Jorge pertains to his alleged role as the murderer in the abbey. The whodunnit commences with the premise that an evil mastermind is operational within the abbey, responsible for the murders of monks in accordance with an apocalyptic design. However, a closer textual examination would acquit Jorge of the crimes.

The first murder, that of Adelmo of Otranto, is allegedly committed by pushing the monk out of the tower window. However, William, the detective monk and protagonist of the narrative, ultimately solves the case as a suicide rather than a homicide. William presumes that Adelmo, feeling remorseful for his licentiousness, might have approached Jorge for confession. The sleuth infers that Jorge's response might be ‘distressing reprimands’ or perhaps ‘refusal of absolution’ or ‘impossible penance’ (Eco, 1998: 139). None of these possible responses actually overstep the 14th-century Church's standard line of response to such transgressions, and none of them necessarily make him the murderer.

The murders of Venantius, Berengar and Malachi, which followed, were caused by the poisonous book. Jorge has poisoned the book and, therefore, is implicated in these murders by the text. This line of argument receives scholarly support, as they identify Jorge as culpable for the extreme measures taken to censor the book (Hallissy, 2001: 280) and thereby orchestrating the monks’ deaths, rather than directly committing the murders (Sallis, 1986: 10). While the argument seems sufficiently sound, a Barthesian referential interpretation ¹ would reveal that the action was not intended as a killing device but as a protective measure, which is not devoid of historical and cultural parallels. If one concurs with the novel's line of argumentation, then moats, trap bridges, pitfall traps, spiked gates employed in medieval castles, mines, or contemporary air defence systems; not to mention the protective measures within the abbey's library itself, such as herbs for visions, ventilation systems creating eerie sounds, and optical illusions – could all be classified as acts of murderers, exonerated solely by a Nagelian principle of ‘moral luck’. ² Severinus of Sankt Wendel, the herbalist, was murdered by Malachi only. William himself notes that Malachi killed Severinus out of jealousy regarding Berengar's closeness to Severinus, a point to which Jorge somewhat concurs and responds that he only asked Malachi to retrieve the book (Eco, 1998: 465). William also acknowledges this reality by admitting that he was ‘seeking one criminal for all the crimes and we discovered that each crime was committed by a different person, or by no one’ (Eco, 1998: 492).

Nevertheless, Jorge is culpable for the death of the abbot as well as for the unsuccessful attempt on the lives of William and Adso. From a Girardian perspective, what renders an individual a scapegoat is not their innocence or guilt, but rather the fact that they are, ‘although no more guilty or innocent than the society as a whole’, unjustly singled out as ‘the only guilty’ one and thus become ‘the lone victim’ (Barge, 2001: 249). The abbey is imbued with malevolence and numerous other transgressions; the external world is also replete with violence, yet the text designates Jorge as the sole perpetrator. Moreover, what elevates Jorge to the position of an archvillain is the presumption that he is the mastermind behind the nefarious scheme of murders that shocked the abbey. However, the very premise of an evil master plan is dismissed, as William eventually concedes that he arrived at Jorge ‘pursuing the plan of a perverse and rational mind’ only to recognise that ‘there was no plan’ and that he was all along vainly seeking ‘a semblance of order’ (Eco, 1998: 492). Consequently, this postmodern subversion of the conventional triumph of the detective in The Name of the Rose discredits the idea of malevolent mastermind.

The second accusation against Jorge pertains to dogmatic obstinacy. He is portrayed as the austere monk who dismisses innocent laughter, delivers thunderous, judgmental sermons and interventions, despises Aristotle, and prefers revelation and patristic writings to modern scientific thought. However, this exemplifies a Nietzschean perspectivism, ³ as the novel, whilst delineating the threshold of a paradigmatic shift, affirms its allegiance to the emerging episteme. The novel's setting marks the watershed moment between the twilight of the late medieval period and the nascent modern epoch. William, the protagonist, and his camp are at the forefront of a modern paradigm that advocates radical changes to the existing structures of the Church, tradition, and knowledge. Jorge is the sentinel of the waning medieval scholastic world. Situated within the liminal space of an epochal transition, Jorge, unfortunately, is on the losing side. As a result, Jorge, embodying the ideals and hierarchies of the late medieval period, is also defenestrated. Nevertheless, if circumstances were reversed, William would have easily replaced Jorge. Furthermore, if Jorge is deemed indictable for steadfastly defending his Weltanschauung, then the same applies to William for vigorously advocating his beliefs.

The binary between Jorge's bigotry and William's benign, open-mindedness is one of the narrative codes used to highlight Jorge's evil. William repeatedly accuses Jorge of pride. His intransigence towards William's rational arguments, whether regarding laughter, biblical interpretations, or theological nuances, creates an aversion to him in the reader. Nevertheless, this exemplifies a Kuhnian instance of incommensurability ⁴ characteristic of a paradigmatic shift. Jorge and William belong to two different paradigms, the medieval and the modern, respectively, and there is incommensurability regarding the concept of evil. Jorge is a Benedictine monk and representative of the medieval paradigm. ‘To medieval order and discipline pride appeared as the worst of all sins and the root of all evil’ (Little, 1971: 20). It is defined as exaggerated individualism. To counter this evil, the Benedictines practised humility, as manifested in their insistence on absolute obedience, which they regarded as the chief virtue. For such a mind, the acceptance and preservation of the scriptures as interpreted by the patristic tradition is virtuous, and questioning of the same would be an audacious act of pride. In contrast, William, as a representative of the empirical scientific paradigm of the modern world, finds no issue in questioning and verifying tradition. For him, pride and devil are ‘the arrogance of the spirit’ and ‘truth that is never seized by doubt’ (Eco, 1998: 448). Hence, the accusation against Jorge abates as an instance of incommensurability.

Further, Jorge's philippic against laughter would seem curmudgeonly to modern sensibility. Still, he was just being faithful to the Benedictine rule, which denies coarse jests and idle words or speech intended to provoke laughter, while other monks downplayed the order's rules and tradition.

Thus, the textual subversive reading of the major accusations made against Jorge in the novel, which depict him as the archvillain, reveals that most of them are unsubstantiated. Admittedly, he is not entirely blameless; however, his misconduct is not sufficient to warrant the odium directed towards him by both the novel and the reader. The underlying rationale for the misplaced emphasis on Jorge's villainous nature becomes significantly more apparent when we analyse the mimetic violence and crisis that the novel seeks to conceal from the reader by adopting a persecutory perspective.

The world in crisis

René Girard (1986: 12) posits the scapegoat mechanism as the culmination and resolution of a community's crisis, where the crisis destabilises established institutions, thereby fostering the formation of mobs and ultimately leading to persecution. In the novel, crises are rampant both in the external world and within the confines of the abbey. The crisis in the outside world is not monolithic; rather, it is conjunctural. ⁵ The multifaceted crises in the political, religious, ideological and economic spheres are mentioned throughout the novel.

The abbey of crimes

The later Middle Ages witnessed the decline of the monastic order, characterised by a gradual and prolonged diminution, and the Benedictines were also not immune to the paradigm shift occurring within the broader societal context (Clark, 2011: 255–256). Umberto Eco portrays the Benedictine abbey as a microcosm of the Sitz im Leben. Consequently, amidst the crises raging beyond its walls, the novel reveals that even within the cloistered confines of the abbey, ostensibly sequestered from the external world, numerous crimes and crises are pervasive. Such as:

Mystification of mimetic violence and crisis

The multidimensional crises looming in the external world and the obnoxious crimes engulfing the abbey paint a crepuscular climacteric of the late Middle Ages. The transitional rupture reflected across various sectors is not shaped by mere economism or religious determinism. Although the text mystifies the reader into believing that the chaos revolves around orthodoxy, freethought, poverty, censorship and murder, what lurks beneath all the conflicts is a mimetic crisis.

The monopolising desire for knowledge and power, reflected at both macro and micro levels, constitutes the originary impulse behind the crises. Both the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor aspire to possess absolute authority in both secular and religious matters, akin to that of the former Roman Empire. The desire for the same object, absolute power, within the level of internal mediation naturally leads to conflicts, as in the case of Pope John XXII and the Emperor Louis. It is this fundamental mimetic conflict that reverberates across the different spheres of society. The various crimes and conflicts within the abbey's close quarters are also mimetic in nature. The desire for power and knowledge is emulated in such a way that conflicts ensue. The regionalism, cliques, and even the crimes in the abbey are only symptoms of an underlying quest for power, as William observes, ‘an abbey is always a place where monks are in conflict among themselves to gain control of the community’ (Eco, 1998: 126). The imitation of the desire for exclusivity over the power/knowledge nexus evolves into an acquisitive mimesis, concretising this abstract drive into tangible desiderata. The office of the Abbot and the librarian, which are highly coveted and contested, is such a concrete manifestation of the underlying mimesis. This is clearly demonstrated by the Italian faction's assault on the librarian's office, which initially appeared focused on resolving the issue. However, it was later revealed to be a covert pursuit of power, as Peter of Sant’Albano, a monk from the Italian faction, asserts, ‘after everything that has happened these past few days, the problem is no longer the librarian, but the abbot’ (Eco, 1998: 417). In fact, even the Forbidden Book, the narrative centrepiece, is only a desideratum symbolising the pouvoir/savoir nexus contested by everyone. Benno tells William, ‘yesterday I hadn’t understood, I believed that book was responsible for everything, but now I’m no longer sure. That was the pretext: you’ve seen that the book was found but Malachi died all the same’ (Eco, 1998: 442).

The novel craftily mystifies the naive reader, obfuscating the fundamental mimetic nature of the crisis. However, critical analysis reveals that the text signifies a moment of conjunctural crisis heading towards a hegemonic realignment, depicted both in the broader external world and within the microcosm of the abbey, where the dominant and emerging ideologies desire a monopoly over power/knowledge, resulting in mimetic violence. Scouring the layers of textual effacement reveals traces of this conjunctural crisis, mimetic in its nature, being resolved by the diffused and systemic persecution of Jorge as the scapegoat.

The Name of the Rose: A text of persecution?

Realising that branding Jorge, despite being guilty of a few charges, as the epitome of villainy is unjustified, and considering the presence of much greater crises and widespread crimes within society and the abbey, prompts a fundamental question: why does the text single out Jorge in particular? It is in answering this question that we realise the novel might be a text of persecution, which is essentially a distorted recounting of violence from the persecutor's perspective (Girard, 1986: 9). For Girard, the texts of persecution are characterised by the effacement of traces of violence against the original scapegoat, and the absence of post-scapegoating sacralisation makes this textual effacement more effective (Fleming, 2004: 103). These texts offer the reader a ‘scapegoat both in and for the text’, concealing the ‘scapegoat of the text’. In the former case, the scapegoat is shown to be the victim of a persecution of which the text itself disapproves. In the latter case, the text makes a character the victim of its own persecution (Brown, 2011: 180). According to Girard (1986: 118), it is this scapegoat that we must disengage from the text, as it is not explicitly identified as such, nor presented as a theme shaping the text, but only as a hidden mechanism that gives structure to all themes.

The Name of the Rose casts before the reader a few scapegoats, while the traces of the real scapegoat are blotted out. Remigio and Salvatore, the victims of the punitive inquisition and the misunderstood heretics trampled under the onward march of orthodoxy, and the girl, representative of the expendable simple folk, all serve as scapegoats in and for the text, functioning as a trompe-l'oeil, obscuring the real scapegoat of the text. They are undoubtedly scapegoats, victims of the counterpart's cruelty and violence. The text rightly recognises this by presenting them as scapegoats, that is, scapegoats in the text; moreover, the narrative stance favours the perspective of these scapegoats, that is, scapegoats for the text. However, adopting a persecutor's perspective, the text highlights all these scapegoats only to enshroud the scapegoating of the real victim, Jorge, who is the scapegoat of the text. He is the purely mythical scapegoat, as he is intentionally or unintentionally veiled by the text, never appearing as a scapegoat within the text, but functioning as a principle that holds the plot together amidst all its digressions.

Being a foreigner, a blind person and also an influential figure, he bears the marks of the stereotypical victim that Girard describes. This is only accentuated by the fact that he is the representative of a waning medieval epistemic and monastic paradigm and a partial causal agent of the deaths. The stereotype of accusation is also present but deserves discussion. The novel depicts an epochal transition marked by cultural eclipse, for Girard, in such times, ‘rather than blame themselves, people inevitably blame either society as a whole, which costs them nothing, or other people who seem particularly harmful for easily identifiable reasons’ (1986: 14). The novel, although traces of pervasive culpability persist despite effacement, opts to highlight the mysterious murderer of the abbey, Jorge, as the principal malefactor rather than acknowledging the universal complicity. Jorge questions this hypocrisy, the ease with which society condemns one to forget its own faults:

All of you no doubt believe that, though you have been overwhelmed with grief, these sad events have not involved your soul, because all of you, save one, are innocent, and when this one has been punished, while you will, to be sure, continue to mourn the absence of those who have gone, you will not have to clear yourselves of any charge before the tribunal of God. So you believe. Madmen! (Eco, 1998: 398)

Siding with the emerging paradigm of scientific empiricism, as represented by William, in denouncing Jorge and framing the narrative around him amid the ubiquity of crimes, the novel also shares this flawed logic of the monks and eventually becomes a text of persecution. Hence, departing from the occult accusations of mythical times, the text employs more rational accusations, such as pedantic orthodoxy and calculated murders, directed against the scapegoat, Jorge.

Finally, the stereotype of violence in which the indicted scapegoat, on whom society places the entire guilt, is either expelled or killed. This mechanism is easily identifiable in classical detective fiction with definitive closure, where the culprit is typically detected and punished. However, The Name of the Rose, proper to its postmodern credentials, keeps the ending wide open, frustrating a closure, in which the sleuth and almost everyone else fail in their pursuits. This brings in an additional level of obscuration, making it challenging to identify the stereotype of violence and the true scapegoat. In this regard, a revisionist reading of the novel reveals the death of Jorge in flames, which seems like a comeuppance or a Durkheimian act of anomic suicide, ¹¹ is in fact the text, replacing the logic of burning at the stake with the symbolism of self-immolation, resolving the crisis by condensing the blame onto Jorge as the scapegoat and dismissing him along with his representative worldview.

Conclusion

René Girard's theory is based on the mimetic nature of violence, which, when left unchecked, results in a social crisis; subsequently, society resolves it by resorting to scapegoating. Annals of this mechanism are often effaced in the texts of persecution, as they are distorted writings from the perspective of persecutors. A Girardian reading of The Name of the Rose reveals Jorge, the arch villain, to be innocent of many of the charges. The novel depicts a historical period of a paradigm shift, marked by conjunctural crises, and an abbey plagued by crimes. Bringing all these strands together, what we are witnessing beneath the layers of this novel is institutional, epistemic and narrative forces joining hands to isolate Jorge as the scapegoat and persecute him. This persecution is not by a single agent, but rather systemic and diffuse, and the text accomplices by concealing it. The novel mystifies the reader's understanding of the mimetic nature of these conflicts; instead, it projects a few victims and masks the actual scapegoating. Therefore, the novel proves to be a literary text of persecution, aligning with the persecutors and concealing the actual scapegoating through mystification and effacement.

Looking at Eco's masterpiece through a Girardian lens undoubtedly challenges his positions on the model author and the triad of intentionality. Confining the reader within the bounds of the intention of the text, intentio operis, is acceptable as long as the text is neutral. But if the intention or the model author itself is structured to masquerade the oppression and scapegoating as pointed out by Girard in the case of the texts of persecution, then we are to wonder ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ (Juvenal, 2014: 67–68) ¹² If the text aligns with the persecutory perspective and conceals scapegoating, inadvertently, the idea of the model author, intended as the checkpoints for safeguarding meaning, could turn into chokepoints that stifle liberative readings and critical inquiries.

This re-reading resonates beyond the scope of Eco studies. We may be inclined to assume that scapegoating is an antiquarian phenomenon, as Girard predominantly associates it with ancient times. However, it is still present in the world, in our workplaces and even in our households, only the name and manner change, but the story remains the same. In fact, the world shrinking into a social media-knit global village inundated with commodified desires provides a seedbed fertile for mimetic violence. The mass narratives of our times create scapegoats, slaughter them and then silence the event by submerging them in texts of persecution.

The globalisation of scapegoating demands that literature shift from being a means of erasing it, as seen in texts of persecution, to a medium that exposes and liberates, thereby facilitating the cessation of scapegoating. To achieve this, the past must be re-visited, rather than blanketed, to expose the scapegoating that is shrouded in the textual debris. Critical reading of the literature of the past thus becomes, more than an aesthetic practice, an emancipatory praxis. Besides this critical obligation, literature in the face of scapegoating also has a humanising appeal. When history and progress are reduced to the totalizing language of dialectics or revolutions, we often neglect the victims who are scapegoated. Beyond philosophical abstractions or political analysis, it is literature, with an eye for emotions, aesthetics and sufferings, that can open humanity's soul to the ‘other’ and embrace it rather than scapegoat it. Furthermore, literature can open one up to recognising and accepting the beauty of one's individuality and uniqueness, rather than drowning in the sea of desires or models that the modern world sells us.

In the end, this Girardian revisionism of The Name of the Rose and Jorge reminds us that literature should not be a panegyric for the victors but an homage to the other, the outcast, the obliterated and the scapegoat. We, as readers and critics, can save the villainised scapegoats of literature, if not from the slaying by the sword, at least from the slaying by the word.