![]() ![]() It is surely one of the greatest historical romances ever written. For a story set in a church it seems very anti-clerical, at least the evil archdeacon is… well, very evil, but Hugo shows us great understanding of where he (and the other characters) is coming from. ![]() It is wonderfully atmospheric and evocative of its turbulent age. This beauty-and-the-beast story is probably too famous to need summarising here. ![]() ![]() You learn a great deal about its eventful history along the way. But the novel has a second, or maybe first, hero – the magnificent gothic cathedral itself (hence the title in French). After all the pentagonal, hexagonal and irregular forms which had followed one another at that window without fulfilling that ideal of grotesqueness which had been foreseen by the excited imaginations by the orgy, nothing more was needed to obtain their suffrage than the grandiose grimace which had just dazzled those gathered there.Ĭalled The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English, although the French title is more appropriate, this is an über-famous historical novel whose hero, or anti-hero, Quasimodo was adopted by the French as a sort of national symbol. It was a truly wondrous grimace which gleamed at that moment in the circular aperture in the rose window. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |