Grossman, Kathryn M.

The later novels of Victor Hugo : variations on the politics and poetics of transcendence / Kathryn M. Grossman. - 1st ed. - Oxford : Oxford University Press 2012. - xii, 285 p. ; 23 cm

Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-275) and index.

From Han d'island to Les Misèrables and beyond -- Monsters, marvels, and transport in Les travailleurs de la mer -- Dystopia and poetic vision in L'homme qui rit -- Romanticism and utopia: Quatrevingt-treize and endless revolution.

This study places the last three novels of Victor Hugo's maturity: "Les Travailleurs de la mer" (1866), "L'Homme qui rit" (1869), and "Quatrevingt-Treize" (1874) - within the context of his artistic development after the success of Les Misèrables (1862). By situating these historical narratives in relation to each other, to all of Hugo's previous fiction, and to a number of poetic and critical works published in exile and in the initial years of the Third Republic, it illuminates the final structural and thematic shifts from a poetics of harmony to one of transcendence. As in "Les Misèrables", the disharmony associated with social tumult, apocalyptic vision, and oxymoronic tensions provides an essential component of the later Hugo's Romantic sublime.

9780199642953 0199642958

2012930336

015964076 Uk


Hugo, Victor, 1802-1885 --Criticism and interpretation.

PQ2301 / .G763 2012

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