Victor Hugo Summary

The French author Victor Marie, Vicomte Hugo (1802-1885), was the supreme poet of French romanticism. He is noted for the breadth of his creation, the versatility that made him as much at ease in the ... Read more

No century of French literature has been better represented by a single author than the nineteenth, and no writer better personifies the French nineteenth century than Victor Hugo. His life span corre... Read more

On 22 May 1885 Victor Hugo died, prompting international mourning unprecedented for a literary figure. Within an hour the periodical Gil Blas published a special edition, which sold out everywhere, a... Read more

In the following excerpt, taken from an essay originally published in British and Foreign Review in 1838, Mazzini discusses the faults and limitations of Hugo's poetry, stating that "his... Read more

In the following essay, Denommé examines Hugo's poetic oeuvre, stating that it is representative of the development of French Romanticism. The critic concludes: "Hugo's poe... Read more

In the essay below, Kaplan examines how various "political, moral, and religious upheavals " in Hugo's life are reflected in his early lyric collections. Victor Hugo's p... Read more

In this excerpt from a review originally published in 1873, Dowden traces Hugo's development as a poet. The career of Victor Hugo naturally divides itself into three periods—first, th... Read more

In the following excerpt, Brereton surveys Hugo's poetry, comparing his works to those of such other French poets as Charles Baudelaire and Alphonse de Lamartine. Rather than a work, the wri... Read more

In the following essay, Babuts analyzes Victor Hugo's imaginative identification with the demonic protagonist of his La fin de Satan. Many critics approach La Fin de Satan with the growing r... Read more