The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in: Notre-Dame de Paris, "Our Lady of Paris") is a novel by Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France published in 1831 Year 1831 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). The title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris , also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair), of the Archbishop of Paris, currently in Paris, which the story is centered around.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame
1831 illustration from the first edition of Hunchback
Author Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France
Original title Notre-Dame de Paris
Illustrator Alfred Barbou (original)
Country France France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian,
Language French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in
Genre(s) Romanticism Romanticism or Romantic Era is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the
Publisher Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases authors may be their own publishers, meaning: originators and developers of content also provide media to deliver and display the content Gosselin
Publication date January 14, 1831

Contents

Background

Hugo began to write Hunchback in 1829. The agreement with his original publisher, Gosselin, was that the book would be finished that same year. However, Hugo was constantly delayed due to the demands of other projects. By the summer of 1830, Gosselin demanded the book to be completed by February 1831. And so beginning in September 1830, Hugo worked non-stop on the project; he bought a new bottle of ink, a woolen cloak, [citation needed] and cloistered himself in his room refusing to be bothered or to leave his house (except for nightly visits to the cathedral). The book was finished six months later.

Synopsis

The story dates back to January 6, 1482, the day of the 'Festival of Fools' in Paris. Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer, is introduced by his crowning as Pope of Fools.

Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men but especially those of Quasimodo and his adopted father, Claude Frollo. Frollo is torn between his lust and the rules of the church. He orders Quasimodo to get her. Quasimodo is caught and whipped and ordered to be tied down in the heat. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, offers him water. It saves her, for she captures the heart of the hunchback Kyphosis , also called hunchback, is a common condition of a curvature of the upper spine. It can be either the result of degenerative diseases (such as arthritis), developmental problems, osteoporosis with compression fractures of the vertebrae, and/or trauma.

She is later accused of the attempted murder of Phoebus, who Frollo attempted to kill in jealousy, and is sentenced to death by hanging. Quasimodo saves her by bringing her to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary. Clopin rallies the Truands (criminals of Paris) to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda. The king, seeing the chaos, vetoes the law of sanctuary and commands his troops to take Esmeralda out and kill her. When Quasimodo sees the Truands, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is hanged. Quasimodo pushes him from Notre-Dame to his death. Quasimodo then goes to Mount Faucon (a huge graveyard in Paris where all hanged bodies are thrown), lies next to her corpse and eventually dies of starvation. One year later, excavationists find the skeletons of Esmeralda with a broken neck and Quasimodo locked in an embrace.

Characters in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Major themes

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As stated by many critics and scholars, the Cathedral of Notre Dame appears to be the main setting, which is almost elevated to the status of a character. Indeed, the original French title of the book, Notre-Dame de Paris (the formal title of the Cathedral) shows that the cathedral (and not Quasimodo) is the subject of the story. The book portrays the Gothic Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture era as one of extremes of architecture A wider definition may comprise all design activity, from the macro-level to the micro-level (construction details and furniture). Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. It requires the creative, passion, and religion Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. Like many of his other works, Hugo is also very concerned with social justice, and his descriptions of religious fanaticism are also examined. Strikingly, Hugo shifts his focus between characters, and assigns the roles of hero and villain to different characters at different points in the novel.

Architecture

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Architecture is a major concern of Hugo's in Notre-Dame de Paris, not just as embodied in the cathedral itself, but as representing throughout Paris and the rest of Europe an artistic genre which, Hugo argued, was about to disappear with the arrival of the printing press. Claude Frollo's portentous phrase, ‘Ceci tuera cela’ ("This will kill that", as he looks from a printed book to the cathedral building), sums up this thesis, which is expounded on in Book V, chapter 2. Hugo writes that ‘quiconque naissait poète se faisit architecte’ ("whoever is born a poet becomes an architect"), arguing that while the written word was heavily censored and difficult to reproduce, architecture was extremely prominent and enjoyed considerable freedom.

Il existe à cette époque, pour la pensée écrite en pierre, un privilége tout-à-fait comparable à notre liberté actuelle de la presse. C'est la liberté de l'architecture. There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture.Book V, Chapter 2

With the recent introduction of the printing press, it became possible to reproduce one's ideas much more easily on paper, and Hugo considered this period to represent the last flowering of architecture as a great artistic form. As with many of his books, Hugo was interested in a time which seemed to him to be on the cusp between two types of society.

Literary significance and reception

The enormous popularity of the book in France spurred the nascent historical preservation movement in that country and strongly encouraged Gothic revival The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms, in contrast to the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. In England, the centre of this revival, architecture. Ultimately it led to major renovations at Notre-Dame in the 19th century led by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Much of the cathedral's present appearance is a result of this renovation.

Allusions and references

Allusions to actual history, geography and current science

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo makes frequent reference to the architecture of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

He also mentions the invention of the printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as the most influential event in the second millennium AD, revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe, when the bookmaker near the beginning of the work speaks of "the German pest."

Victor Hugo lived a few homes away from Victor of Aveyron Victor of Aveyron was a feral child who apparently lived his entire childhood naked and alone in the woods before being found wandering the woods near Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, France in 1797. He was captured, but soon escaped. He was then captured again and kept in the care of a local woman for about a week before he escaped once more, the first well-documented feral child A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. Some feral children have been confined by people (usually their own parents); in some cases this child abandonment was due to the parents',[1] although the inspiration for Quasimodo's character is not directly linked to him.

Allusions in other works

The name Quasimodo has become synonymous with "a courageous heart beneath a grotesque exterior." [2]

Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations

To date, all of the film and TV adaptations have strayed somewhat from the original plot, some going as far as to give it a happy ending.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame has had a number of film adaptations:

It has also appeared on TV numerous occasions:

Theatre:

Music:

Musical theatre:

Ballet:

Radio:

The book was twice adapted and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as its Classic Serial:

Publication history

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is widely available in English language editions.

Quotations

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009)

Notes

  1. ^ Shattuck, R. (1980). The forbidden experiment: The story of the wild boy of aveyron. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
  2. ^ Webber, Elizabeth; Mike Feinsilber (1999). Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions. Merriam-Webster. pp. 592. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0877796289.
  3. ^ The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  4. ^ MAINSTAGE 1997 - NICHOLAS DeBEAUBIEN'S THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
  5. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Disneys-Gloeckner-Notre-German-Version/dp/B00002DFMR
  6. ^ Hunchback
  7. ^ Playbill News: Hunchback of Notre Dame Musical By Styx Front-Man to Play Chicago's Bailiwick

Bibliography

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Notre-Dame de Paris (Victor Hugo)
Wikisource Wikisource is an online library of free content textual sources, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to harbour all forms of free text, in many languages. It also provides translation efforts to this end has original text related to this article: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France
Characters EsmeraldaClaude FrolloQuasimodo Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel Notre Dame de Paris (1831) by Victor HugoCaptain PhoebusClopin TrouillefouJehan FrolloPierre Gringore
Films Esmeralda (1905)The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911)The Darling of Paris (1917)Esmeralda (1922 film)The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American film starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda, and is directed by Wallace Worsley. The film is the most famous adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, aside from the 1996 Disney Adaptation. The film was Universal's "Super Jewel" of 1923 andThe Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1939 American monochrome motion picture. It is considered by some reviewers to be the best of the many film versions of Victor Hugo's classic novel, and perhaps the one that sticks closest to Hugo's plot and intention although the ending differs. Esmeralda and Quasimodo remain alive at the end, unlike the novel, inNotre Dame de Paris (1956)The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1966)The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977)The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982)The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1986)Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is inspired by Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. While the basic structure remains, the filmThe Hunchback (1997)Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002)
Other Adaptations La Esmeralda (1844 ballet)Notre-Dame de Paris (1998 musical)Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (1999 musical)

Categories: Novels by Victor Hugo | Paris in fiction | France in fiction | 1831 novels | Novels set in the Middle Ages | Novels adapted into films

 

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Mountain Xpress (blog) ... A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) (3:30 pm), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) (6 pm) is full of his biopics, and those are the very reason he's unsung ...
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What are some of the major themes, motifs, and symbols in the Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Q. Please explain to me some of the major themes with text to explain.
Asked by anna786 - Thu Aug 30 11:32:31 2007 - - 1 Answers - 0 Comments

A. Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo Major Theme. The most important theme in the novel is that a person cannot be judged on appearances. Since Frollo is a priest, a person would normally assume him to be a kind and righteous man. In truth, he is despicably cruel, manipulative, and evil. In contrast, most people judged Quasimodo to be the devil because of his disfigured outward appearance. Inside, however, he is filled with love and kindness, becoming La Esmeralda s savior and protector. La Esmeralda is also misjudged. Because she is a gypsy street entertainer, the people of Paris believe she is evil; but like Quasimodo, she is filled with love and kindness. She marries Gringoire to save him from execution and steps forward on the… [cont.]
Answered by Knowledge is Power. - Thu Aug 30 13:19:08 2007

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