The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Analysis

Hugo is oddly specific about when and where this story takes place. In fact, Time gets the first line of the novel: "Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago, the good...

WARNING: Do not assume that the narrator of this novel is Victor Hugo. Sure, he may constantly remind us of how he is writing the novel in the 1830's, like when in Book VII.IV in the middle of the...

Historical FictionVictor Hugo, one of the most famous writers of the nineteenth century, rarely ever wrote about the nineteenth century. He was all about times past. That makes his books doubly com...

This book might be a 500-page tragedy, but make no mistake: it's hilarious. And by hilarious, we don't mean gargoyle slapstick: the fact is that Hugo is totally tongue-in-cheek about just about eve...

Here's what you should know about this novel's style: it has a huge scope, and it goes from major historical events to the little mundane happenings on the streets of Paris. For Hugo, everything is...

Make sure you're sitting down for this: this book is not called The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.Victor Hugo titled his novel Notre-Dame de Paris, which in French is simply "Notre-Dame of Paris." That's...

Technically, it's not an epigraph, but we're going to talk about it as if it were, because it sets the tone for the entire novel. It can be summed up in one word: ANÁΓKH. That's pronounced "an-an...

The very last chapter of the novel is called "The Marriage of Quasimodo," and the very last image of the book is the skeletons of Quasimodo and Esmeralda (conveniently still in her white dress) loc...

Let us clarify: this book wouldn't garner nearly as high of a Tough-o-Meter rating if it weren't for the ridiculous slew of historical references Hugo throws all over the place. Seriously, this nov...

In most stories, we expect to meet the important people right away, but in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, there are quite a few important people—and it's not immediately apparent how they're all r...

In this stage, we see the setup of who loves whom: Esmeralda wants Phœbus, Frollo wants Esmeralda, Quasimodo just wants somebody. So now we have a sense of what all the drama is going to be abou...

The first act lasts from beginning of the novel to the end of Book V. It's mostly stage setting for events that are really going to drive the plot, starting with Quasimodo's trial.This section las...

The novel isn't actually called The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in French. It's Notre-Dame de Paris, or simply "Notre-Dame of Paris" (source). "Notre Dame" means "Our Lady," as in the Virgin Mary.It's...

Disney did not prepare you for this. The Middle Ages, as imagined by Victor Hugo, were not exactly the prettiest of times, unless you're talking about the architecture. After all, it's just not the...

Beelzebub (VI.III.2, VIII.II.36)Dædalus (V.I.82)Hermes (V.I.81)Iliad(V.II.16, V.II.38)Orpheus (V.I.81, V.II.22)Pierre Corneille, The Cid (I.II.65)Scylla and Charybdis (II.I)The Tower of Babel (II....