Read complete books and articles on: Victor Hugo

Hugo, Victor Marie, Vicomte - hyooˈgō, Fr. vēktôrˈ märēˈ vēkôNtˈ ügōˈ, 1802–85, French poet, dramatist, and novelist, b. Besançon. His father was a general under Napoleon. As a child he was taken to Italy and Spain and at a very early age had published his first book of poems, resolving "to be Chateaubriand or nothing." The preface to his drama Cromwell (1827) placed him at the head of the romanticists; he remained the greatest exponent of the school and was considered by many the greatest poet of his day. His principal poetic works are Les Orientales (1829), Les Feuilles d'automne (1831), Les Chants du crépuscule (1835), Les Voix intérieures (1837), Les Rayons et les ombres (1840), Les Châtiments (1853), Les Contemplations (1856), and La Légende des siècles (1859). The production of his poetic drama Hernani (tr. 1830), which broke with conventions of the French theater, caused a riot between the classicists and the romanticists. The drama was the basis of Verdi's opera Ernani; Verdi also made use of Hugo's play Le Roi s'amuse (1832) for Rigoletto. Other plays include Marion Delorme (1831, tr. 1872), Ruy Blas (1838, tr. 1850), and Les Burgraves (1843), the failure of which spelled the end of the romantic drama. The tragic deaths in that year of Hugo's daughter and her husband were reflected in a moving series of poems of childhood, including The Art of Being a Grandfather (1877). Hugo's two greatest novels are Notre Dame de Paris (1831, tr. 1833) and Les Misérables (1862, tr. 1862), which are epic in scope and portray the sufferings of humanity with great compassion and power. His other important novels include Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866, tr. Toilers of the Sea, 1866), and Quatre-vingt-treize (1874, tr. Ninety-three, 1874). He began his political career as a supporter of the duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon's son; later Hugo espoused the cause of Louis Philippe's son, and then for a short time of Louis Bonaparte. Because he afterward opposed Napoleon III, Hugo was banished and went first to Brussels, then to the isle of Jersey, and later (1855) to Guernsey, where he lived until 1870, refusing an amnesty. In 1870 he returned to Paris in triumph. He was elected to the national assembly and the senate. His last years were marked by public veneration and acclaim, and he was buried in the Panthéon. Critics are divided as to his relative greatness, but he was a towering figure in 19th-century French literature.

See biographies by A. Maurois (tr. 1956), H. Peyre (1980), and G. Robb (1997); studies by R. B. Grant (1968), E. M. Grant (1945, repr. 1966 and 1968), J. P. Houston (1974), W. M. Greenberg (1985), and V. Brombert (1986).

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14 of the Best Books and Articles on: Victor Hugo

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Notre-Dame de Paris » Read Now
by Victor Hugo, Alban Krailsheimer. 561 pgs.

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At the center of Hugo's classic novel are three extraordinary characters caught in a web of fatal obsession. The grotesque hunchback Quasimodo, bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, owes his life to the austere archdeacon, Claude Frollo, who in turn is bound by a hopeless passion to the gypsy dancer Esmeralda...
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At the center of Hugo's classic novel are three extraordinary characters caught in a web of fatal obsession. The grotesque hunchback Quasimodo, bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, owes his life to the austere archdeacon, Claude Frollo, who in turn is bound by a hopeless passion to the gypsy dancer Esmeralda. She, meanwhile, is bewitched by a handsome, empty-headed officer, but by an unthinking act of kindness wins Quasimodo's selfless devotion. Behind the central figures moves a pageant of picturesque characters, including the underworld of beggars and petty criminals whose assault on the cathedral is one of the most spectacular set-pieces of Romantic literature. Alban Kraisheimer's new translation offers a fresh approach to this monumental work by France's most celebrated Romantic authors.
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2.

Six French Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Lamartine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme » Read Now
by A. M. Blackmore, E. H. Blackmore. 336 pgs.

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'Poetry will no longer keep in time with action; it will be ahead of it.' Arthur Rimbaud The active and colourful lives of the poets of nineteenth-century France are reflected in the diversity and vibrancy of their works. At once sacred and profane, passionate and satirical, these remarkable and...
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'Poetry will no longer keep in time with action; it will be ahead of it.' Arthur Rimbaud The active and colourful lives of the poets of nineteenth-century France are reflected in the diversity and vibrancy of their works. At once sacred and profane, passionate and satirical, these remarkable and innovative poems explore the complexities of human emotion and ponder the great questions of religion and art. They form as rich a body of work as any one age and language has ever produced. This unique anthology includes generous selections from the six nineteenth-century French poets most often read in the English-speaking world today: Lamartine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé. Modern translations are printed opposite the original French verse, and the edition contains over a thousand lines of poetry never previously translated into English.
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3.

Figuring Transcendence in Les Miserables: Hugo's Romantic Sublime » Read Now
by Kathryn M. Grossman. 362 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Literature, Entire Library
4.

The Simplest of Signs: Victor Hugo and the Language of Images in France, 1850-1950 » Read Now
by Timothy Raser. 217 pgs.

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Must we learn how to read pictures? Or are pictures viewed, and texts read? If both pictures and texts are read, what theory accounts both for this reading and the manifest differences that exist between the two sign systems? In response to such questions, Timothy Raser traces the evolution of "simple signs".
5.

Victor Hugo's Poetics, in The Romanic Review » Read Now
by Michael Riffaterre. 10 pgs.

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6.

Victor Hugo on the Universe within the Poet, in The Romanic Review » Read Now
by Michael Riffaterre. 12 pgs.

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7.

Victor Hugo's European Utopia, in Nineteenth-Century French Studies » Read Now
by Edward Ousselin. 11 pgs.

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8.

Dream, Creativity and Madness in Nineteenth-Century France (Chap. 17 "Victor Hugo and the 'Headland of Dream'") » Read Now
by Tony James. 304 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Psychology, Entire Library

Those wishing to know the nature of madness, wrote Voltaire, should observe their dreams. This is an important new analysis of the problematic relationship between dreams and madness that preoccupied nineteenth-century French writers, thinkers, and doctors. Tony James shows how doctors (such as...
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Those wishing to know the nature of madness, wrote Voltaire, should observe their dreams. This is an important new analysis of the problematic relationship between dreams and madness that preoccupied nineteenth-century French writers, thinkers, and doctors. Tony James shows how doctors (such as Esquirol, Lelut, and Janet), thinkers (including Maine de Biran and Taine), and writers (Balzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Rimbaud) grappled in very different ways with the problems raised by the so-called "phenomena of sleep" and particularly the question: might dreams be a source of creativity?
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9.

Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature (Chap. 5 "The Memory of Hayti: William Faulkner, Victor Hugo, and the Saint-Domingue Revolution") » Read Now
by Chris Bongie. 550 pgs.

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A comprehensive historical and theoretical study of the "creolization" process and its relevance to both colonial and postcolonial literatures, this book focuses for the most part on novels from or about the French Caribbean.
It examines the ways in which colonial authors such as Bernardin de...
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A comprehensive historical and theoretical study of the "creolization" process and its relevance to both colonial and postcolonial literatures, this book focuses for the most part on novels from or about the French Caribbean.
It examines the ways in which colonial authors such as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Victor Hugo, as well as such contemporary writers as Edouard Glissant and Daniel Maximin, have represented the process of cultural mixing and (con)fusion to which, under a variety of names (creolization, hybridity, metissage), postcolonial theorists have increasingly turned in order to understand the complexities of cultural identity in today's transnational world. Notwithstanding the obvious differences separating colonial and postcolonial literatures, Islands and Exiles emphasizes their entanglements, mapping out a middle ground in which they are ambivalently linked to one another.
An introductory section shows how colonial and postcolonial literatures are joined in a relation of epistemic complicity that the author designates with the word "post/colonial". That relation is exemplified by the intertextual links binding together Daniel Defoe's colonial classic Robinson Crusoe and J. M. Coetzee's postcolonial rewriting of it, Foe.
Subsequent chapters include an analysis of the central text of Enlightenment exoticism, Bernardin's Paul et Virginie; overviews of Glissant's novels as well as his theoretical discussions of creolization; an examination of fictional representations of the Haitian revolution (such as Hugo's Bug-Jargal and William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!); and an extended consideration of nineteenth-century Martiniquan literature and politics.
The bookconcludes with a reading of New Zealander Keri Hulmes's the bone people, in which the author summarizes his core argument: namely, that in discussions of cultural identity, we need to maintain a fine balance between promoting the hy
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10.

Literary Theory and Criticism ("Victor Hugo: Revolution or the Hour of Laughter" begins on p. 719) » Read Now
by Joseph P. Strelka. 1466 pgs.

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11.

Inscribing His Ideal Reader(ship): Victor Hugo and the Shaping of le Lecteur Pensif, in French Forum » Read Now
by Isabel K. Roche. 13 pgs.

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12.

Literary Reviews and Essays: On American, English, and French Literature ("Hugo's Legende de Siecles" begins on p. 136) » Read Now
by Henry James, Albert Mordell. 418 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
13.

A Victor Hugo Encyclopedia » Read Now
by John Andrew Frey. 305 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Though he wrote more than a century ago, French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885) continues to capture the imagination of contemporary readers both in France and around the world. In the United States, he is best remembered as the author of the novel Les Miserables (1862), which has been adapted for...
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Though he wrote more than a century ago, French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885) continues to capture the imagination of contemporary readers both in France and around the world. In the United States, he is best remembered as the author of the novel Les Miserables (1862), which has been adapted for the stage, and of Notre-Dame-de-Paris (1831), more commonly known to Americans as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But Hugo was also a poet and politician, a great religious and social thinker, and one of the most important shapers of French Romanticism. This reference book is a comprehensive guide to his life and literature. The volume begins with a biography that places Hugo within the context of 19th-century France. The alphabetically arranged entries that follow discuss his works, characters, and themes, as well as historical persons and places. Many of the entries cite sources of additional information, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.
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14.

Victor Hugo's Drama: An Annotated Bibliography, 1900-1980 » Read Now
by Ruth Lestha Doyle. 224 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library