The Hunchback of Notre Dame | Victor Hugo

In the following excerpt, Raser presents decline in many aspects of society as the “deep subject” of Hugo’s novel.

. . . Hernani was a great success, but this success was achieved only after as “battle” during which Hugo’s proponents, young members of the Romantic movement, systematically cheered the play and drowned out its opponents—literary conservatives— for the first week of its performance.

In the success following those first performances, Hugo neglected to give the option of first refusal to Gosselin, publisher of Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné, and in order to rectify this breach of contract, promised Gosselin a new novel for January 1831, thus agreeing to...

[The entire page is 1244 words long]

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