Victor Hugo’s
lasting appeal as a novelist can be attributed in large part to
the unforgettable characters that he created, yet the most criticized
and least understood element of his fiction has been character.
Isabel Roche’s Character and Meaning in the Novels of
Victor Hugo seeks to unravel this paradox through a comprehensive
re-evaluation of the creation and role of character in Hugo’s
five major novels: Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), Les
Misérables (1862), Les Travailleurs de la mer
(1866), L’Homme qui rit (1869), and Quatrevingt-treize
(1873).
With an approach that combines attention to genre, narratology,
and reader-response criticism, as well as consideration of Hugo’s
own critical and philosophical writings, Roche explores the ways
in which Hugo’s novels eschew the realist notion of the representable
individual in favor of a new—and surprisingly modern—kind
of fiction in which character serves a conceptual, nonpsychological
function. Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo
provides a deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances
that characterize both Hugo’s novel writing and the nineteenth-century
French novel, and will thus appeal to the specialist and nonspecialist
alike.
“[Roche's book] will make an important contribution to
Hugo studies and, more broadly, to our understanding of nineteenth-century
French fiction. The author has addressed a critical question that
earlier scholarship had failed to ask: why does Hugo develop character
as he does?” Kathryn M. Grossman, author of The Early
Novels of Victor Hugo and Figuring Transcendence in “Les
Misérables”
“Larger than life by design—not by flaw—Hugo’s
characters provide readers, as this study elucidates, with fertile
ground for inquiry into larger and essential questions about character-making
in nineteenth-century French fiction and about the ways in which
character generates meaning. Character and Meaning in the
Novels of Victor Hugo provides a deeper and more comprehensive
understanding of the complexities and nuances that characterize
both Hugo‘s novel writing and the nineteenth-century French
novel, and will thus appeal to specialists and nonspecialists
alike.” SirReadaLot.org/issues No. 96 (March 2007).
Available online at <http://www.sirreadalot.org/SRL/reviews/0096.htm#Roche>
For further reviews, see:
The Chronicle of Higher Education 26 Jan. 2007.
Reference and Research Book News May 2007.
Isabel Roche, Bennington College, specializes in the nineteenth-century
French novel. She has published articles on Hugo’s Notre-Dame
de Paris and Les Misérables.
ISBN-10: 1-55753-438-1; ISBN-13: 978- 1-55753-438-5
2007. Vol. 38. x, 242 pp. Paper $43.95
Display in Stanley Coulter Hall, September 18-25,
2006.
|
