The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [268]
—The Cornhill Magazine (August 1874)
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
[Hugo,] the greatest poet of this century [,] has been more than such a force of indirect and gradual beneficence as every great writer must needs be. His spiritual service has been in its inmost essence, in its highest development, the service of a healer and a comforter, the work of a redeemer and a prophet. Above all other apostles who have brought us each the glad tidings of his peculiar gospel, the free gifts of his special inspiration, has this one deserved to be called by the most beautiful and tender of all human titles—the son of consolation. His burning wrath and scorn unquenchable were fed with light and heat from the inexhaustible dayspring of his love—a fountain of everlasting and unconsuming fire.
—Victor Hugo (1886)
VICTOR BROMBERT
The principle of effacement in Hugo’s work has far-reaching implications. It not only signals a steady displacement of the historical center of gravity but corresponds to the dynamics of undoing that Hugo reads into the process of nature and of creation. It also denies the priority, and even the status, of the historical event. History itself—both as event and as discourse on the event—must ultimately be effaced in favor of transhistorical values. To be historically committed is a moral responsibility. But more important still is the need to understand that beyond history’s inability to provide meaning, there is history as evil. What is involved is not a banal inventory of history’s horrors—the brutalities, contusions, fractures, mutilations, and amputations attributed to man throughout history by the narrator of Notre-Dame de Paris as he considers the historical ravages that disfigured gothic architecture. More fundamentally, evil is linked to the very notion of sequentiality.
—Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel (1984)
Questions
1. Through the character of Pierre Gringoire, how does Hugo represent the figure of the writer/artist? What kinds of conclusions can we draw from this vision?
2. Who is the villain of the novel? Claude Frollo? Phoebus de Châteaupers? The king, Louis XI? What does this ambiguity suggest?
3. In the French original, the titular hero (so to speak) of this novel is the cathedral of Notre-Dame, not the “hunchback.” Which title-Notre-Dame de Paris or the title given in the English translation, The Hunchback of Notre Dame— more accurately names the novel’s thematic core?
4. In the manifesto-like preface to his play Cromwell, Hugo called for a new aesthetic that brought together the grotesque and the sublime. Clearly, The Hunchback is informed by this aesthetic. Is the result to be admired or deplored? What, for example, is the effect on characterization?
5. The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been popular for roughly 170 years. It has generated many movies, musicals, plays, and a library of commentary. How would you explain this enduring popularity?
For Further Reading
Biography and General Interest
Bloom, Harold, ed. Victor Hugo. Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
Frey, John Andrew. A Victor Hugo Encyclopedia. Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Georgel, Pierre. Drawings by Victor Hugo: Catalogue. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1974.
Peyre, Henri. Victor Hugo: Philosophy and Poetry. Translated by Roda P. Roberts. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980.
Porter, Laurence. Victor Hugo. Twayne’s World Authors Series, no. 883. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999.
Robb, Graham. Victor Hugo: A Biography. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1998.
Ward, Patricia. The Medievalism of Victor Hugo. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975.
Criticism
Brombert, Victor. Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Grant, Richard B. The Perilous Quest: Image, Myth, and Prophecy in the Narratives of Victor Hugo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1968.
Grossman, Kathryn M. The Early Novels