Monatsarchive: August 2017

The Man Who Laughs – Victor Hugo

“The Man Who Laughs” (“L’Homme qui Rit”) was called by its author “A Romance of English History,” and was written during the period Hugo spent in exile in Guernsey. Like “The Toilers of the Sea,” its immediate predecessor, the main theme of the story is human heroism, confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind chance. As a passionate cry on behalf of the tortured and deformed, and the despised and oppressed of the world, “The Man Who Laughs” is irresistible. Of it Hugo himself says in the preface: “The true title of this book should be “Aristocracy’”—inasmuch as it was intended as an arraignment of the nobility for their vices, crimes, and selfishness. … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Les Misérables Volume 2 – Victor Hugo

Les Misérables is widely regarded as the greatest epic and dramatic work of fiction ever created or conceived: the epic of a soul transfigured and redeemed, purified by heroism and glorified through suffering; the tragedy and the comedy of life at its darkest and its brightest, of humanity at its best and at its worst. The novel elaborates upon the history of France, the architecture and urban design of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love. This is part one of two, containing the first two volumes (“Fantine”, “Cosette”) and the first seven books of volume three (”Marius”).

Les Misérables Volume 2

Format: … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Les Misérables Volume 1 – Victor Hugo

Les Misérables is widely regarded as the greatest epic and dramatic work of fiction ever created or conceived: the epic of a soul transfigured and redeemed, purified by heroism and glorified through suffering; the tragedy and the comedy of life at its darkest and its brightest, of humanity at its best and at its worst. The novel elaborates upon the history of France, the architecture and urban design of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love. This is part one of two, containing the first two volumes (“Fantine”, “Cosette”) and the first seven books of volume three (”Marius”).

Les Misérables Volume 1

Format: … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Toilers of the Sea – Victor Hugo

A fisherman encounters all the fury, and caprice, and treachery of outer nature in order to win a woman whom on his return he finds to have unconsciously but irrevocably lost her heart to another. But this plainest of stories is worked into genuine tragedy by an exercise of poetic power which, at least in some portions of its display, has very rarely been surpassed in literature. It is difficult to dissent from those who fancy they discover in the author’s three volumes a romance, an epic poem, and a drama of real life. There is also in the volumes a charming idyl, full of grace, sweetness, and simplicity. If there be … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Notre-Dame de Paris – Victor Hugo

‘Notre-Dame de Paris’, also known as ‘The Hunchback of Notre-Dame’ is the best-known novel of French romanticist Victor Hugo. The story about the gypsy Esmeralda, who captures the hearts of Captain Phoebus, Pierre Gringoire, the bell-ringer Quasimodo and his guardian Archdeacon Claude Frollo is an all-time classic and a must-read for all fans of French novels.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Format: Paperback

Notre-Dame de Paris.

ISBN: 9783849676834.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

The Writings of Victor Hugo (from Wikipedia):

Hugo published his first novel the year following his marriage (Han d’Islande, 1823), and his second three years later (Bug-Jargal, 1826). Between 1829 and 1840, he published five more volumes of poetry (Les Orientales, … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Hans of Iceland – Victor Hugo

Since the awful times in which Monk Lewis used to chill the blood of the reading public, and revived in persons of mature age the terrors’ of infancy, there was hardly a romance so horrible, and, at the same time, so well written, as Hans of Iceland. The author has not confined himself to natural horrors, but has introduced, in the being who gives name to the work, a sort of half-demon, whose delight is in wickedness and cruelty. The book is a clever specimen of what is popularly known as the “blood and thunder” style of novel.

Hans of Iceland

Format: Paperback

Hans of Iceland.

ISBN: 9783849677176.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.… Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Oliver Cromwell – Victor Hugo

‘Oliver Cromwell’ was written in 1827, but was not performed until 1956. The reasons were its length of almost 7000 verses and Hugo’s gigantic list of characters. The drama tells the story of Oliver Cromwell’s internal conflicts in being offered the crown of England. The preface is nowadays considered as one of the manifestos of the Romantic movement.

Oliver Cromwell

Format: Paperback

Oliver Cromwell.

ISBN: 9783849677169.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

The Writings of Victor Hugo (from Wikipedia):

Hugo published his first novel the year following his marriage (Han d’Islande, 1823), and his second three years later (Bug-Jargal, 1826). Between 1829 and 1840, he published five more volumes of poetry (Les Orientales, 1829; … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Torquemada – Victor Hugo

Torquemada, a drama about the Spanish inquisition, is one of the greatest masterpieces of the master poet of the 19th century. The construction of this tragedy is absolutely original and unique: free and full of change as the wildest and loosest and roughest of dramatic structures ever flung together, and left to crumble or cohere at the pleasure of accident or of luck, by the rudest of primaeval playwrights : but perfect in harmonious unity of spirit, in symmetry or symphony of part with part, as the most finished and flawless creation of Sophocles or of Phidias. Torquemada is one of the sublimest, in all the illimitable world of dramatic imagination.

Torquemada

Format: Paperback

Torquemada.

ISBN: … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Amy Robsart – Victor Hugo

In 1828 Victor Hugo had just completed Cromwell, and was about to write Manon de Lorme. Cromwell was not his first drama; several years earlier he had written one: Amy Robsart. Six years had passed, and M. Hugo had entirely forgotten his first play, when the younger of his two brothers-in-law, Paul Foucher, who had a strong inclination for the stage, begged him to let him read it. But the play was not produced as the author wrote it at the age of nineteen. Victor Hugo did to Amy Robsart what he had done to Bug Jargal, and what he would have done to Cromwell, had not Talma’s death prevented its production. He modified and … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Burgraves – Victor Hugo

The fundamental conception of the drama “The Burgraves” is a dramatic struggle between two antithetical forces: fatality attempting to impose punishment on a degraded race and providence striving to pardon and to rehabilitate. The poet has embodied the force of fatality in an old slave named Guanhumara, a sorceress endowed with a knowledge of medicinal herbs. She has effected several cures, including that of Hatto the grandson of Job, who is the chief burgrave; and on this account, she is allowed much more freedom than is granted to the other slaves. Within the character of Guanhumara there is the contrast between the apparent weakness on account of her age, sex, and condition and the tremendous … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...