Questions tagged [victor-hugo]
Questions about the works of French poet, novelist and dramatist Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885) and his life as a writer. Use this tag with [french-language].
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Why is Esmeralda still sentenced to death?
In the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by French author Victor Hugo, Esmeralda is sentenced to death for killing Captain Phoebus.
But when you continue reading the novel you'll find out Phoebus is ...
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What figure of speech is "trèfles de braise" in "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame"?
This is an extract of Book X, chapter IV of Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, emphasis mine):
Tous les yeux s'étaient levés vers le haut de l'église. Ce qu'ils ...
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Is this a typo in my copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Nevertheless, as be harangued them, the satisfaction and admiration unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by his words;
Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (AmazonClassics Edition) ...
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What does "to the sack" mean in Hunchback of Notre Dame?
What does "to the sack" mean in this context:
To the sack, to the sack!” rose the cry on all sides.
At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which we have described above, was ...
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What was Victor Hugo's attitude towards religion, especially referring to a chapter in "Les Miserables"?
I'm reading "Les Miserables", knowing almost nothing about his author, and I'm now approaching Volume II - Book VII - Chapter VI (The absolute goodness of prayer).
Here, Hugo is criticizing ...
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What did the convict mean by “I’m a number: number 15,729” in "The Bishop's Candlesticks"?
Norman McKinnel’s play The Bishop’s Candlesticks is an adaptation of volume one, book second, of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables.
The play is based on the concept that no man is a born offender. It ...
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Why did Victor Hugo write that "the interior of the soul" is "grander than the sky"?
“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Whether "the interior ...
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In Les Miserables, why can Javert be the judge of Fantine and why does Monsieur Madeleine have the power to stop him?
In Les Miserables, one of the Protagonists, Fantine, attacks a citizen on the open street after he insulted her and put snow in the back of her dress. She is then arrested by Javert, the local police ...
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What does Victor Hugo mean by "the red ant heaps of Toulon"?
In his novel "The Last Day of a Condemned Man", Victor Hugo writes the following sequence in reference to poor people who turn to crime out of hunger:
Unfortunate beings, whom, by means of ...
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Is there a Reader's Guide to Hunchback of Notre Dame?
I (well, currently my wife, but I plan to as well) am trying to read Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame in a beautiful faux-suede edition that we received as a gift. However, there are various ...
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Who does “he” refer to in this passage from Les Miserables?
In the following passage from Les Miserables, with characters Mr. Thenardier and Jean Valjean, who does the bold "he" refer to?
Be that as it may, on entering into conversation with the man, sure ...
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Why was "Notre Dame de Paris" changed from "Notre Dame of Paris" to "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" when it was re-published in English?
In the foreword to my copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Elizabeth Massie writes this:
Victor Hugo's early novel, Notre Dame de Paris, published in 1831 and set in medieval Paris of 1482, was the ...
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Why did Victor Hugo take several pages to say that his knowledge of Paris was woefully out of date?
At one point in Les Miserables, Victor Hugo inserted a fairly lengthy disclaimer (I don't recall the exact chapter number) explaining that his knowledge of Paris was basically accurate but several ...
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When was young Cosette's bedtime?
While the song "Come to Me" was probably not intended as a treatise on astronomical timekeeping or 19th-century French child-rearing, some of Fantine's lines (taken at face value) fit together for a ...
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Was there a reason Victor Hugo chose 24601 as the number for Jean Valjean?
24601 has developed into being an iconic part of both the Les Miserables book and musical. Was that number special to him, or was it simply a random number he chose (I doubt it)?