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1 The introduction 1
1.1 The introduction of Victor Hugo and Notre-Dame de Paris..1
1.2 The introduction of beauty and ugliness contrast principle4
1.3 The contrast of the social background 6
2 The contrast of the figures in Notre-Dame de Paris 8
2.1 Esmeralda and Quasimodo 8
2.2 Esmeralda and Phoebus 9
2.3 Esmeralda and Pierre Gringoire 10
2.4 Esmeralda and Claude Frollo11
3 The inner contrast of the two central figures 12
3.1 The contrast of Gypsy Esmeralda’s early and late characteristics12
3.2 The contrast of Claude Frollo’s duality of his personality...13
4 Conclusion..15
Bibliography..16
1The introduction
Romantic literature appeared at the end of the 18th century and reached its booming period in the 19th century. It is one of the most important ideological trends of the modern western literature. Analyzed from the aspect of diachronic study, Romantic literature is to inherit and carry forward the idea of humanism and to lash out at the abrupt French classicism in the Renaissance; analyzed from the aspect of synchronic study, Romantic literature and the ensuing realism are the two big systems which constitute the modern western literature. They make the western literature prosperous in the 19th century and have a profound influence on the modern literature. One of the most important and influential representatives is Victor Hugo.
1.1 The introduction of of Victor Hugo and Notre-Dame de Paris
Victor Hugo is a French poet, novelist, and dramatist. He is considered as one of the most well-known French Romantic writers. He published as a poet in the 1820s before achieving success on the stage with Hernani. Hernani is a historical drama in a quasi-Shakespearian style which had famously riotous performances themselves, as much a spectacle as the play, on its first run in 1830. Like Dumas, he is best known for his novels, especially Notre-Dame de Paris which is one of the best known works of his long career. The preface to his unperformed play Cromwell gives an important manifesto of French Romanticism, stating that “there are no rules or models”. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry and rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Hugo’s life covers three-quarters of the 19th century. He witnessed the rise and the fall of the empire Napoleon, the two restorations of the Bourbons, the success and the failure of the second empire and the establishment of French Third Republic. In other words, he experienced the process of defeating and destroying the feudal force by the French bourgeoisie until they set up the complete Bourgeois political and economic system.
Victor Hugo's enormous output is unique in French literature. It is said that he used to write each morning 100 lines of verse or 20 pages of prose. He went on to assume the role of an outlawed sage and put down his insights and prophetic visions in prose and verse, then he became at last the genial grandfather of popular literary portraiture and the national poet who gave his name to a street in every town in France.
This instinctive recognition of Hugo as a great poet at the time of his death was followed by a period of critical neglect. A few of his poems were remembered, but Les Misérables continued to be widely read. The generosity of his ideas and the warmth of his expression still moved the public mind, for Hugo was a poet of the common man and he knew how to write with simplicity and power of common joy and sorrows. But there was another side to him—Paul Claudel called his “panic contemplation” of the universe, the numinous fear that penetrates his somber poems La Fin de Satan and Dieu. Hugo's knowledge of the resources of French verse and his technical virtuosity in meter and rhyme rescued French poetry from the sterility of the 18th century. André Gide (the famous French writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, for his extensive package of texture and artistic works) when asked whom he considered the greatest French poet, replied “Victor Hugo, alas.”, it meant that if it was a regrettable fact at least it was fact.