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Notre Dame Cathedral Romanticism. Victor Hugo "Notre Dame Cathedral": description, heroes, analysis of the work

Unlike the heroes of literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, Hugo's heroes combine contradictory qualities. Making extensive use of the romantic technique of contrasting images, sometimes deliberately exaggerating, turning to the grotesque, the writer creates complex ambiguous characters. He is attracted by gigantic passions, heroic deeds. He extols the strength of his character as a hero, rebellious, rebellious spirit, ability to deal with circumstances. In the characters, conflicts, plot, landscape of Notre Dame Cathedral, the romantic principle of reflecting life triumphed - exceptional characters in extraordinary circumstances. The world of unbridled passions, romantic characters, surprises and accidents, the image of a brave person who does not shy away from any dangers, this is what Hugo sings in these works.

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CHISINAU 2011

ROMANTIC PRINCIPLES IN V. HUGO'S NOVEL "THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTHER DOMEN OF PARIS".

Victor Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris remains a true example of the first period in the development of romanticism, a textbook example of it.

In his work, Victor Hugo created unique romantic images: Esmeralda is the embodiment of humanity and spiritual beauty, Quasimodo, in whose ugly body a sympathetic heart is found.

Hugo claims that there is a constant struggle between good and evil in the world. In the novel, even more clearly than in Hugo's poetry, the search for new moral values was outlined, which the writer finds, as a rule, not in the camp of the rich and those in power, but in the camp of the destitute and despised poor. All the best feelings - kindness, sincerity, selfless devotion - are given to the foundling Quasimodo and the gypsy Esmeralda, who are the true heroes of the novel, while the antipodes, standing at the helm of secular or spiritual power, like King Louis XI or the same archdeacon Frollo, are different cruelty, fanaticism, indifference to the suffering of people.

It is significant that it was precisely this moral idea of Hugo's first novel that F. M. Dostoevsky highly appreciated. Offering Notre Dame Cathedral for translation into Russian, he wrote in a preface published in 1862 in the journal Vremya that the idea of this work is “the restoration of a dead person crushed by unjust oppression of circumstances ... This idea is the justification of the humiliated and all outcast pariahs of society.” “Who would not think,” Dostoevsky wrote further, “that Quasimodo is the personification of the oppressed and despised medieval people ... in which, finally, love and a thirst for justice awakens, and with them the consciousness of their truth and still untouched infinite forces of their ".

LOVE QUASIMODO AND Claude Frollo TO ESMERALDA. ROMANTICISM IN "THE PARIS CATHEDRAL".

There is a fundamental difference between the love of Quasimodo and Claude Frollo for Esmeralda. The passion of Claude Frollo is selfish. He is busy only with his own experiences, and Esmeralda exists for him only as an object of his experiences. Therefore, he does not recognize her right to independent existence, and perceives any manifestation of her personality as disobedience, as treason. When she rejects his passion, he is unable to bear the thought that the girl can get another, and he himself gives her into the hands of the executioner. The destructive passion of Claude Frollo is opposed to the deep and pure love of Quasimodo. He loves Esmeralda completely disinterestedly, without claiming anything and not expecting anything from his beloved. Without demanding anything in return, he saves her and gives her shelter in the Cathedral; moreover, he is ready for anything for the sake of Esmeralda's happiness and wants to bring to her the one with whom she is in love - the beautiful Captain Phoebe de Chateauper, but he cowardly refuses to meet her. For the sake of love, Quasimodo is capable of a feat of self-sacrifice - in the eyes of the author, he is a true hero.

The third peak of the love triangle in the novel is the image of the beautiful Esmeralda. She embodies in the novel the spirit of the approaching Renaissance, the spirit of the era that is replacing the Middle Ages, she is all joy and harmony. An eternally young, lively, fervent Rabelaisian spirit boils in her; this fragile girl, by her very existence, challenges medieval asceticism. Parisians perceive a young gypsy with a white goat as an unearthly, beautiful vision, but, despite the extreme idealization and melodramatism of this image, it has that degree of vitality that is achieved with romantic typification. Esmeralda has the beginnings of justice and kindness (an episode with the rescue of the poet Pierre Gringoire from the gallows in the Court of Miracles), she lives widely and freely, and her airy charm, naturalness, moral health are equally opposed to the ugliness of Quasimodo and the gloomy asceticism of Claude Frollo. Romanticism in this image is also reflected in Esmeralda's attitude to love - she cannot change her feelings, her love is uncompromising, it is in the truest sense of the word love to the grave, and for the sake of love she goes to death.

Colorful and secondary images of the novel are the young aristocrat Fleur de Lis, the king, his entourage; wonderful pictures of medieval Paris. No wonder Hugo spent so much time studying the historical era - he draws its openwork, multicolored architecture; the polyphony of the crowd conveys the peculiarities of the language of the era, and in general the novel can be called an encyclopedia of medieval life.

The peculiarity of romanticism in Hugo's Notre Dame Cathedral lies in the fact that a very rich and intricate plot, full of secrets and intrigues, is played out by bright, exceptional characters, which are revealed by opposing images. Romantic characters in general, as a rule, are static, they do not change over time, if only because the action in romantic works develops very rapidly and covers a short period of time. The romantic hero, as it were, appears before the reader for a short moment, as if snatched from the darkness by a blinding flash of lightning. In a romantic work, the characters are revealed through the opposition of images, and not through the development of character. This contrast often takes on an exceptional, melodramatic character, typically romantic, melodramatic effects arise. Hugo's novel depicts exaggerated, hypertrophied passions. Hugo uses categories traditional for romantic aesthetics - light and darkness, good and evil - but fills them with quite specific content. Hugo believed that a work of art should not slavishly copy reality, but transform it, present it in a "condensed", concentrated form. He compared a work of literature to a concentrating mirror that fuses the individual rays of life into a multicolored bright flame. All this made Notre Dame Cathedral one of the brightest examples of romantic prose, determined the success of the novel with its first readers and critics, and continues to determine its popularity today.

In the majestic, monumental world of Hugo, both the sublime and the vulnerable sides of romanticism were embodied. A curious statement about Hugo M. Tsvetaeva: "This feather of the elements was chosen as herald. Solid peaks. Each line is a formula. Infallibility tires. The splendor of common places. The girl is always innocent. The old man is always wise. In the tavern they always get drunk. The dog cannot help but die on the owner's grave. That's Hugo. No surprises."

Bibliography:

Internet resources:

http://www.licey.net/lit/foreign/gugoLove
http://etelien.ru/Collection/ 15/15_00139.htm

As in dramas, Hugo turns to history in Notre Dame; late French Middle Ages, Paris at the end of the 15th century. Romantic interest in the Middle Ages largely arose as a reaction to the classicist focus on antiquity. The desire to overcome the scornful attitude towards the Middle Ages, which spread thanks to the writers of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, for whom this time was a kingdom of darkness and ignorance, played a role here, useless in the history of the progressive development of mankind. Here one could meet, romantics believed, with solid, great characters, strong passions, exploits and martyrdom in the name of convictions. All this was still perceived in an aura of some mystery associated with the insufficient study of the Middle Ages, which was replenished by an appeal to folk traditions and legends, which had special significance for romantic writers. The Middle Ages appears in Hugo's novel in the form of a legend-history against the backdrop of a masterfully recreated historical flavor.

The basis, the core of this legend is, in general, unchanged for the entire creative path of the mature Hugo, the view of the historical process as an eternal confrontation between two world principles - good and evil, mercy and cruelty, compassion and intolerance, feelings and reason.

The novel is built according to the dramatic principle y: three men seek the love of one woman; the gypsy Esmeralda is loved by the archdeacon of Notre Dame Cathedral, Claude Frollo, the bell ringer of the cathedral, the hunchback Quasimodo, and the poet Pierre Gringoire, although the main rivalry arises between Frollo and Quasimodo. At the same time, the gypsy gives her feelings to the handsome but empty nobleman Phoebe de Chateauper.

Hugo's novel-drama can be divided into five acts. In the first act, Quasimodo and Esmeralda, not yet seeing each other, appear on the same stage. This scene is the Place de Greve. Here Esmeralda dances and sings, here a procession passes, with comic solemnity carrying the pope of jesters Quasimodo on a stretcher. The general merriment is confused by the grim menace of the bald man: “Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” Esmeralda's bewitching voice is interrupted by the terrible cry of the recluse of Roland's tower: “Will you get out of here, Egyptian locust?” The game of antitheses closes on Esmeralda, all plot threads are drawn to her. And it is no coincidence that the festive fire, illuminating her beautiful face, illuminates the gallows at the same time. This is not just a spectacular contrast - this is the plot of a tragedy. The action of the tragedy, which began with the dance of Esmeralda on the Greve Square, will end here - with her execution.

Every word uttered on this stage is full of tragic irony. In the first act, voices are of particular importance, and in the second - gestures, then in the third - looks. The point of intersection of views becomes the dancing Esmeralda. The poet Gringoire, who is next to her in the square, looks at the girl with sympathy: she recently saved his life. The captain of the royal shooters, Phoebe de Chateauper, with whom Esmeralda fell in love at the first meeting, looks at her from the balcony of a Gothic house - this is a look of voluptuousness. At the same time, from above, from the north tower of the cathedral, Claude Frollo looks at the gypsy - this is a look of gloomy, despotic passion. And even higher, on the bell tower of the cathedral, Quasimodo froze, looking at the girl with great love.

Romantic pathos appeared in Hugo already in the very organization of the plot. The history of the gypsy Esmeralda, the archdeacon of Notre Dame Cathedral Claude Frollo, the bell ringer Quasimodo, the captain of the royal shooters Phoebe de Chateauper and other characters associated with them is full of secrets, unexpected turns of action, fatal coincidences and accidents. The fates of the characters are bizarrely crossed. Quasimodo tries to steal Esmeralda on the orders of Claude Frollo, but the girl is accidentally rescued by a guard led by Phoebus. For the attempt on Esmeralda, Quasimodo is punished. But it is she who gives the unfortunate hunchback a sip of water when he stands at the pillory, and with her good deed transforms him.

There is a purely romantic, instant breakdown of character: Quasimodo turns from a rude animal into a man and, having fallen in love with Esmeralda, objectively finds himself in a confrontation with Frollo, who plays a fatal role in the girl's life.

“Notre Dame Cathedral” is a romantic work in style and method. In it you can find everything that was characteristic of Hugo's dramaturgy. It contains both exaggerations and a game of contrasts, and poetization of the grotesque, and an abundance of exceptional situations in the plot. The essence of the image is revealed in Hugo not so much on the basis of character development, but in opposition to another image.

The system of images in the novel is based on the theory of the grotesque developed by Hugo and the principle of contrast. The characters line up in clearly marked contrasting pairs: the freak Quasimodo and the beautiful Esmeralda, also Quasimodo and the outwardly irresistible Phoebus; an ignorant ringer - a learned monk who knew all the medieval sciences; Claude Frollo also opposes Phoebus: one is an ascetic, the other is immersed in the pursuit of entertainment and pleasure. The gypsy Esmeralda is opposed by the blond Fleur-de-Lys, the bride of Phoebe, a rich, educated girl and belonging to the high society. The relationship between Esmeralda and Phoebus is also based on the contrast: the depth of love, tenderness and subtlety of feeling in Esmeralda - and the insignificance, vulgarity of the foppish nobleman Phoebus.

The internal logic of Hugo's romantic art leads to the fact that the relationship between sharply contrasting characters acquires an exceptional, exaggerated character. Thus, the novel is built as a system of polar oppositions. These contrasts are not just an artistic device for the author, but a reflection of his ideological positions, the concept of life.

According to Hugo, the formula for the drama and literature of modern times is "everything is in antithesis." It is not for nothing that the author of The Council praises Shakespeare because “he stretches from one pole to the other”, because in his “comedy bursts into tears, laughter is born from sobs”. The principles of Hugo the novelist are the same - a contrasting mixture of styles, a combination of “the image of the grotesque and the image of the sublime”, “terrible and buffoonish, tragedy and comedy”.

Victor Hugo managed not only to give color to the era, but also to expose the social contradictions of that time. In the novel, a huge mass of disenfranchised people opposes the dominant handful of nobility, clergy and royal officials. Characteristic is the scene in which Louis XI stingily calculates the cost of building a prison cell, ignoring the plea of a prisoner languishing in it.

It is not for nothing that the image of the cathedral occupies a central place in the novel. The Christian Church played an important role in the system of serfdom.

The system of romantic characters in the novel by V. Hugo "Notre Dame Cathedral".

Romanticism in literature is the era of the predominance of lyrical genres, primarily lyric poetry, lyric-epic poem. In prose, romanticism manifested itself most clearly in the novel, which F. Schlegel considered a synthetic universal genre, most of all corresponding to the tasks of new literature. The early romantic novel was primarily psychological, exploring the contradictory, complicated consciousness of the protagonist (“Rene” by the French writer F. R. Chateaubriand, 1801; “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” by the greatest German romantic F. Novalis, 1801). In English Romanticism, Sir Walter Scott (1788-1832) is the first example of the historical novel. This genre is quickly gaining exceptional popularity in all European literatures. Consider a romantic historical novel on the example of the work of Victor Hugo.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885), the greatest French Romantic, performed in all genres of romantic literature. The ninety volumes of his collected works contain twenty-two collections of his poems, twenty-one dramas, nine novels, poems, articles, speeches, journalism. If in Russia Hugo is known mainly as a novelist, then in France he is recognized as the most prolific and original poet in the entire history of French poetry. He is the author of a whole “ocean of poetry”, the exact number of poetic lines he created is calculated - 153,837. The nineteenth century in the history of French literature is sometimes called by his name - “the age of Hugo”.

Victor Hugo was the third, youngest son in the family of the Napoleonic General Leopold Hugo. Poetic talent was discovered in him early, already at the age of fifteen he received a commendable review from the Academy. In the twenties he was recognized as the head of the young romantic school in France, his authority as a fighter against classicism was established in the "romantic battle" for staging the first romantic drama on the French stage. In the thirties, Hugo's "romantic theater" was created, and he is also established as a prose writer. Hugo enthusiastically accepted the revolution of 1848 and plunged into political activity, interrupted by the coup d'état of 1851. Hugo did not agree with the methods of the armed seizure of power by Louis Napoleon, with the policy of the new emperor of France, and spent the entire time of his reign (1851-1870) in exile in England. These nineteen years turned out to be the most heroic period of his life and the most fruitful period of his work. Hugo revealed himself in a new way as a lyric poet and citizen poet, completed work on the novel Les Misérables (1862), wrote the novels The Man Who Laughs and Toilers of the Sea. After the fall of the regime of Louis Napoleon, Hugo triumphantly returns to his homeland, and in the last years of his life his talent manifests itself as diversely as in his youth. He creates his own "Free Theatre", performs with new collections of lyrics, publishes the novel "Ninety-Third" (1874).

Of all the milestones in Hugo's creative biography, the premiere of the drama Hernani (1829) was of particular importance, marking the end of the dominance of classicism on the French stage and the recognition of romanticism as a new leading literary trend. Even in the preface to the drama “Cromwell” (1827), Hugo formulated the main provisions of the romantic theory in France, in particular, the concept of the romantic grotesque - the French version of the category of romantic irony. In accordance with these theoretical provisions, on the wave of enthusiasm for the work of Walter Scott, Hugo wrote his first mature novel, Notre Dame Cathedral (1831).

For three years, Hugo collected and pondered the material of the novel: he thoroughly studied the historical era, Paris of the 15th century, the reign of Louis XI, and the architecture of the cathedral. The novel was written very quickly, in six months, and bears the imprint of the political events of the time of creation - the revolution of 1830. In the past, Hugo wants to understand the origins of the heroism of the French people, manifested during the revolution. The picture of a national holiday opens the novel, the picture of a popular revolt completes it. The whole novel unfolds against the broad background of the life of the city crowd.

The folk spirit in the novel embodies the central image of the novel. This is the title image - Notre Dame Cathedral, Notre Dame. Here is the protagonist of the novel: “... the huge Cathedral of Our Lady, looming in the starry sky with the black silhouette of its two towers, stone sides and monstrous rump, like a two-headed sphinx dozing in the middle of the city ...” Hugo had the ability to animate the images of inanimate objects, and Notre -Ladies live their own, special lives in the novel. The cathedral is a symbol of the people's Middle Ages. For Hugo, the majestic Gothic cathedral, built by obscure masters, is first of all a wonderful folk art, an expression of the folk spirit. The cathedral is a colossal creation of man and people, the crown of folk fantasy, the "Iliad" of the French people of the Middle Ages.

At the same time, the cathedral in the novel is the arena of worldly passions. He reigns in the artistic space of the novel: all the most important events take place either within the walls of the cathedral or on the square in front of it. He seems to take part in the action, actively helping some characters, opposing others: he shelters Esmeralda in his walls, throws Claude Frollo from his towers.

The protagonists of the novel emerge from the crowd around the cathedral. The plot is based on a traditional love triangle, a love melodrama. The images of all the main characters are created in accordance with Hugo's theory of the romantic grotesque, that is, they are based on hyperbole, exaggeration, concentration of features; the author not only contrasts the characters with each other, but the image of each character is built on the contrast of external features and internal spiritual properties. The reader is first introduced to Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of the Cathedral of Our Lady. At the beginning of the novel, the election of the king of freaks, the “daddy of jesters”, takes place, and in competition with everyone who makes terrible faces, the natural face of Quasimodo wins - an unnatural, frozen grotesque mask. At first, his appearance corresponds to his semi-animal worldview. Quasimodo gives voice to the cathedral, "brings life into this vast building."

The cathedral is Quasimodo's home, because he is a foundling found in the cathedral's foundling manger. The archdeacon of the cathedral, Claude Frollo, brought up a little deaf freak and made him a bell ringer, and in this occupation Quasimodo's talent is manifested. For him, the ringing of bells turns into a symphony of sounds, with his help the cathedral talks with the townspeople. But the townspeople see in the extremely disgusting ringer only a mistake of nature. For everyone, he is a “damn” bell ringer who wakes people up at night, and those who saw him climbing like a monkey along the sheer towers of the cathedral consider him to be the devil or a chimera come to life from the towers of the cathedral.

The appearance of Quasimodo arouses disgust in people, and from human hostility he hides behind the high walls of his father's house - the cathedral. The cathedral in medieval culture is a symbolic embodiment of the whole world, replacing the whole outside world for Quasimodo. At the same time, its reliable walls become a fortress for Quasimodo, in which he languishes in loneliness. The walls of the cathedral and rare ugliness reliably separate it from people.

In the indistinct, unclear soul of Quasimodo, the beautiful awakens under the influence of the love for Esmeralda that has flared up in him. In romanticism, love is the driving force of the human soul, and Quasimodo becomes human, sublimely noble under its influence. The image of Quasimodo is built on the contrast of an ugly appearance (the romantics were the first in world literature to show interest in the ugly, this was reflected in the expansion of the sphere of aesthetically significant romanticism in art) and an altruistic, beautiful soul. He embodies the soul of the cathedral in the novel and, more broadly, the spirit of the folk Middle Ages.

Quasimodo's rival in passion for Esmeralda is his tutor, Claude Frollo. This image is one of the most interesting creations of the Hugo romantic. This is the most modern personality type of all the characters in the novel. On the one hand, Claude Frollo is a stern religious fanatic, an ascetic, a despot, consistently eradicating everything human from himself; this shows his medieval, gloomy fanaticism. On the other hand, at the cost of constant work on himself, he became the most learned person among his contemporaries, he comprehended all the sciences, but nowhere did he find truth and peace, and his restless spiritual discord with himself is a trait of a man of the New Age, a trait of a romantic hero.

In pride and strength of character, the priest Claude Frollo is not inferior to the pirate Conrad, he is characterized by the same contempt for the miserable people who make up humanity, this is another version of the romantic individualist hero. Like the corsair, Claude Frollo flees from human society, he locks himself in his cell in the cathedral. He is suspicious of the carnal nature of man, but the author makes this scholastic scholar experience a real passion for Esmeralda. He perceives the fire of this passion as a hellish, sinful fire that devours him; it humiliates him that a street dancer has become the object of his irresistible passion.

Having fallen in love, Claude Frollo rethinks his entire past life. He becomes disillusioned with his studies in science, begins to doubt his faith. But he discovers that love, which in the soul of an ordinary, normal person gives rise to a reciprocal feeling, in the soul of a priest gives rise to something monstrous. The distorted, ugly love of Claude Frollo results in pure hatred, in boundless malice. The priest turns into a demon. The author argues with one of the main provisions of Catholicism about the need to suppress the natural inclinations of a person. The atrocities of Claude Frollo turn out to be his misfortune: “Scientist - I outraged science; nobleman - I dishonored my name; clergyman - I turned the breviary into a pillow for lustful dreams; I spat in the face of my god!”

Hugo's novel depicts exaggerated, hypertrophied passions. Hugo uses categories traditional for romantic aesthetics - light and darkness, good and evil - but fills them with quite specific content. Hugo believed that a work of art should not slavishly copy reality, but transform it, present it in a “condensed”, concentrated form. He compared a work of literature to a concentrating mirror that fuses the individual rays of life into a multicolored bright flame. All this made Notre Dame Cathedral one of the brightest examples of romantic prose, determined the success of the novel with its first readers and critics, and continues to determine its popularity today.

In the majestic, monumental world of Hugo, both the sublime and the vulnerable sides of romanticism were embodied. The statement about Hugo M. Tsvetaeva is curious: “This feather of the elements was chosen as herald. Solid peaks. Each line is a formula. Infallibility is tiring. The splendor of common areas. The world has just been created. Every sin is the first. The rose is always fragrant. Beggar - absolutely beggar. The girl is always innocent. The old man is always wise. In a tavern - always drunk. The dog cannot but die on the owner's grave. Such is Hugo. No surprises.” But in romanticism, the art of paradoxes and opposites, the attraction to the grandiose coexisted with skepticism and irony. A kind of summing up of Western European romanticism was the work of the German poet Heinrich Heine.

ROMANTIC PRINCIPLES IN V. HUGO'S NOVEL
"THE CATHEDRAL OF THE PARIS MOTHER"
INTRODUCTION
A true example of the first period of the development of romanticism, a textbook example of it, remains the novel by Victor Hugo “Notre Dame Cathedral”.
In his work, Victor Hugo created unique romantic images: Esmeralda is the embodiment of humanity and spiritual beauty, Quasimodo, in whose ugly body there is a sympathetic heart.
Unlike the heroes of literature of the 17th-18th centuries, the heroes of Hugo combine contradictory qualities. Making extensive use of the romantic method of contrasting images, sometimes deliberately exaggerating, turning to the grotesque, the writer creates complex ambiguous characters. He is attracted by gigantic passions, heroic deeds. He extols the strength of his character as a hero, rebellious, rebellious spirit, ability to deal with circumstances. In the characters, conflicts, storyline, landscape of Notre Dame Cathedral, the romantic principle of reflecting life triumphed - exceptional characters in extraordinary circumstances. The world of unbridled passions, romantic characters, surprises and accidents, the image of a brave person who does not shy away from any dangers, this is what Hugo sings in these works.
Hugo claims that there is a constant struggle between good and evil in the world. In the novel, even more clearly than in Hugo's poetry, the search for new moral values was outlined, which the writer finds, as a rule, not in the camp of the rich and those in power, but in the camp of the destitute and despised poor. All the best feelings - kindness, sincerity, selfless devotion - are given to the foundling Quasimodo, the gypsy Esmeralda, who are the true heroes of the novel, while the antipodes, standing at the helm of secular or spiritual power, like King Louis XI or the same archdeacon Frollo, are distinguished by cruelty, fanaticism indifference to human suffering.
It is significant that it was precisely this moral idea of Hugo's first novel that F. M. Dostoevsky highly appreciated. Offering “Notre Dame Cathedral” for translation into Russian, he wrote in a preface published in 1862 in the journal “Vremya” that the idea of \u200b\u200bthis work is “the restoration of a dead person crushed by the unjust oppression of circumstances ... This idea is the justification of the humiliated and outcast pariahs of society” . “Who would not think,” Dostoevsky wrote further, “that Quasimodo is the personification of the oppressed and despised medieval people ... in which love and a thirst for justice finally wake up, and with them the consciousness of their truth and their still untouched infinite forces.”

Chapter 1.
ROMANTICISM AS A LITERARY TREND
1.1 Cause
Romanticism as an ideological and artistic direction in culture appeared at the end of the 18th century. Then the French word romantique meant “strange”, “fantastic”, “picturesque”.
In the 19th century, the word “Romanticism” became a term for a new literary trend, opposite to Classicism.
In the modern sense, the term "Romanticism" is given a different, expanded meaning. They designate a type of artistic creativity that opposes Realism, in which the decisive role is played by the non-perception of reality, but its re-creation, the embodiment of the ideal of the artist. This type of creativity is characterized by demonstrative conventionality of form, fantastic, grotesque images, symbolism.
The event that served as an impetus for realizing the inconsistency of the ideas of the 18th century and for changing the worldview of people in general was the Great French Bourgeois Revolution of 1789. Instead of the expected result - "Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood" - it brought only hunger and devastation, and with them disappointment in the ideas of the enlighteners. Disappointment in the revolution as a way to change social life caused a sharp reorientation of social psychology itself, a turn of interest from the external life of a person and his activities in society to the problems of the spiritual, emotional life of the individual.
In this atmosphere of doubt, changes in views, assessments, judgments, surprises at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, a new phenomenon of spiritual life arose - romanticism.
Romantic art is characterized by: disgust for bourgeois reality, a resolute rejection of the rationalistic principles of bourgeois education and classicism, distrust of the cult of reason, which was characteristic of the enlighteners and writers of the new classicism.
The moral and aesthetic pathos of romanticism is associated primarily with the affirmation of the dignity of the human person, the inherent value of her spiritual and creative life. This found expression in the images of the heroes of romantic art, which is characterized by the image of outstanding characters and strong passions, aspiration for unlimited freedom. The revolution proclaimed the freedom of the individual, but the same revolution gave birth to the spirit of acquisitiveness and selfishness. These two sides of personality (the pathos of freedom and individualism) manifested themselves in a very complex way in the romantic conception of the world and man.

1.2. Main distinguishing features
Disappointment in the power of the mind and in society gradually grew to “cosmic pessimism”, it was accompanied by moods of hopelessness, despair, “world sorrow”. The internal theme of the "terrible world", with its blind power of material relations, the longing for the eternal monotony of everyday reality, has passed through the entire history of romantic literature.
Romantics were sure that “here and now” is an ideal, i.e. a more meaningful, rich, fulfilling life is impossible, but they did not doubt its existence - this is the so-called romantic two-world. It was the search for an ideal, the pursuit of it, the thirst for renewal and perfection that filled their lives with meaning.
The Romantics resolutely rejected the new social order. They put forward their "romantic hero" - an exceptional, spiritually rich personality who felt lonely and restless in the emerging bourgeois world, mercantile and hostile to man. Romantic heroes sometimes turned away from reality in despair, sometimes rebelled against it, painfully feeling the gap between the ideal and reality, powerless to change the life around them, but preferring to perish than to reconcile with it. The life of bourgeois society seemed so vulgar and prosaic to the romantics that they sometimes refused to portray it at all and colored the world with their imagination. Often the romantics portrayed their heroes as being in hostile relations with the surrounding reality, dissatisfied with the present and aspiring to the guilt of the world that is in their dreams.
Romantics denied the necessity and possibility of an objective reflection of reality. Therefore, they proclaimed the subjective arbitrariness of creative imagination as the basis of art. Exceptional events and the extraordinary environment in which the characters acted were chosen as plots for romantic works.
Romantics were attracted by everything unusual (the ideal may be there): fantasy, the mystical world of otherworldly forces, the future, distant exotic countries, the originality of the peoples inhabiting them, past historical eras. The demand for a faithful recreation of place and time is one of the most important achievements of the era of romanticism. It was during this period that the genre of the historical novel was created.
But the characters themselves were exceptional. They were interested in all-consuming passions, strong feelings, secret movements of the soul, they spoke about the depth and inner infinity of style and the tragic loneliness of a real person in the world around him.
Romantics were indeed lonely among people who did not want to notice the vulgarity, prosaic and lack of spirituality of their lives. Rebels and seekers they despised these people. They preferred to be not accepted and misunderstood than, like most of those around them, to wallow in the mediocrity, dullness and routine of a colorless and prosaic world. Loneliness is another trait of a romantic hero.
Along with the intense attention to the individual, a characteristic feature of romanticism was a sense of the movement of history and the involvement of man in it. The feeling of instability and variability of the world, the complexity and inconsistency of the human soul determined the dramatic, sometimes tragic perception of life by romantics.
In the field of form, romanticism contrasted the classical “imitation of nature” with the creative freedom of the artist, who creates his own special world, more beautiful, and therefore more real than the surrounding reality.

Chapter 2
VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK
2.1 Romantic principles of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) entered the history of literature as the head and theorist of French democratic romanticism. In the preface to the drama "Cromwell" he gave a vivid exposition of the principles of romanticism as a new literary trend, thereby declaring war on classicism, which still had a strong influence from all French literature. This preface was called the "Manifesto" of the romantics.
Hugo demands absolute freedom for drama and poetry in general. “Away with all rules and patterns! he exclaims in the Manifesto. The poet's advisers, he says, should be nature, truth, and his own inspiration; besides them, the only laws obligatory for the poet are those that, in each work, follow from his plot.
In the Preface to Cromwell, Hugo defines the main theme of all modern literature - the image of the social conflicts of society, the image of the intense struggle of various social forces that rebelled against each other.
The main principle of his romantic poetry - the depiction of life in its contrasts - Hugo tried to substantiate even before the "Foreword" in his article on W. Scott's novel "Quentin Dorward". “Isn’t there,” he wrote, “life a bizarre drama in which good and evil, beautiful and ugly, high and low, are mixed, the law that operates in all creation?”
The principle of contrasting oppositions in Hugo's poetics was based on his metaphysical ideas about the life of modern society, in which the determining factor in development is supposedly the struggle of opposite moral principles - good and evil - existing from eternity.
A significant place in the "Preface" Hugo assigns the definition of the aesthetic concept of the grotesque, considering it a distinctive element of medieval poetry and modern romantic. What does he mean by this concept? “The grotesque, as opposed to the sublime, as a means of contrast, is, in our opinion, the richest source that nature opens up to art.”
Hugo contrasted the grotesque images of his works with the conditionally beautiful images of epigone classicism, believing that without introducing phenomena into literature, both sublime and base, both beautiful and ugly, it is impossible to convey the fullness and truth of life. With all the metaphysical understanding of the category “grotesque”, the rationale for this element of art Hugo was nevertheless a step forward on the path of bringing art closer to the truth of life.
Hugo considered the work of Shakespeare to be the peak of the poetry of modern times, because in Shakespeare's work, in his opinion, a harmonious combination of elements of tragedy and comedy, horror and laughter, sublime and grotesque, was realized - the fusion of these elements constitutes a drama, which "is a creation typical of the third era of poetry, for modern literature.
The Romantic Hugo proclaimed a free, unrestricted fantasy in poetic creativity. He considered the playwright to have the right to rely on legends, and not on genuine historical facts, to neglect historical accuracy. According to him, “one should not look for pure history in drama, even if it is “historical”. She tells legends, not facts. This is a chronicle, not a chronology.”
In the Preface to Cromwell, the principle of a truthful and multilateral reflection of life is persistently emphasized. Hugo speaks of "truthfulness" ("le vrai") as the main feature of Romantic poetry. Hugo argues that the drama should not be an ordinary mirror that gives a flat image, but a concentrating mirror, which “not only does not weaken the colored rays, but, on the contrary, collects and condenses them, turning the flicker into light, and the light into flame.” Behind this metaphorical definition lies the desire of the author to actively choose the most characteristic bright phenomena of life, and not just copy everything he sees. The principle of romantic typification, which boils down to the desire to choose from life the most catchy, unique in their originality features, images, phenomena, made it possible for romantic writers to effectively approach the reflection of life, which favorably distinguished their poetics from the dogmatic poetics of classicism.
Features of a realistic comprehension of reality are contained in Hugo's reasoning about "local color", by which he understands the reproduction of the true situation of the action, historical and everyday features of the era chosen by the author. He condemns the widespread fashion to hastily apply strokes of "local color" to the finished work. The drama, in his opinion, should be saturated from the inside with the color of the era, it should appear on the surface, “like the juice that rises from the root of a tree into its very last leaf.” This can be achieved only through a careful and persistent study of the depicted era.
Hugo advises the poets of the new, romantic school to portray a person in the inseparable connection of his external life and the inner world, he requires a combination in one picture of the “drama of life with the drama of consciousness”.
The romantic sense of historicism and the contradiction between the ideal and reality were refracted in Hugo's worldview and work in a peculiar way. He sees life as full of conflicts and dissonances, because there is a constant struggle between two eternal moral principles - Good and Evil. And flashy “antitheses” (contrasts) are called upon to convey this struggle - the main artistic principle of the writer, proclaimed in the Preface to Cromwell, in which images of the beautiful and the ugly are contrasted, whether he draws. he pictures of nature, the soul of man or the life of mankind. The element of Evil, the “grotesque” rages in history, images of the collapse of civilizations, the struggle of peoples against bloody despots, pictures of suffering, disasters and injustice pass through all of Hugo’s work. And yet, over the years, Hugo became more and more strengthened in his understanding of history as a rigorous movement from Evil to Good, darkness to light, from slavery and violence to justice and freedom. This historical optimism, unlike most romantics, Hugo inherited from the enlighteners of the 18th century.
Attacking the poetics of the classic tragedy, Hugo rejects the principle of the unity of place and time, which is incompatible with artistic truth. The scholasticism and dogmatism of these “rules,” Hugo argues, impede the development of art. However, he retains the unity of action, that is, the unity of the plot, as consistent with the “laws of nature” and helps to give the development of the plot the necessary dynamics.
Protesting against the affectation and pretentiousness of the style of the epigones of classicism, Hugor argues for the simplicity, expressiveness, sincerity of poetic speech, the enrichment of its vocabulary by including folk sayings and successful neologisms, for “language does not stop in its development. The human mind always moves forward, or, if you like, changes, and the language changes along with it. Developing the position of language as a means of expressing thought, Hugo notices that if each era brings something new to the language, then “each era must have words expressing these concepts.
Hugo's style is characterized by the most detailed descriptions; his novels often have long digressions. Sometimes they are not directly related to the storyline of the novel, but almost always they are distinguished by poetry or cognitive value. Hugo's dialogue is lively, dynamic, colorful. His language is replete with comparisons and metaphors, terms related to the profession of heroes and the environment in which they live.
The historical significance of the “Preface to Cromwell” lies in the fact that Hugo dealt a crushing blow to the school of followers of classicism with his literary manifesto, from which she was no longer able to recover. Hugo demanded the depiction of life in its contradictions, contrasts, in the clash of opposing forces, and thereby brought art closer, in fact, to a realistic display of reality.

Chapter 3
ROMAN-DRAMA "THE CATHEDRAL OF THE PARIS MOTHER OF GOD"
The July Revolution of 1830, which overthrew the Bourbon monarchy, found an ardent supporter in Hugo. There is no doubt that Hugo's first significant novel, Notre Dame, begun in July 1830 and completed in February 1831, also reflected the atmosphere of the social upsurge caused by the revolution. Even more than in Hugo's dramas, in Notre Dame ” found the embodiment of the principles of advanced literature, formulated in the preface to “Cromwell”. The aesthetic principles outlined by the author are not just a manifesto of the theoretician, but deeply thought out and felt by the writer of the foundations of creativity.
The novel was conceived in the late 1820s. It is possible that the impetus for the idea was the novel by Walter Scott "Quentin Dorward", where the action takes place in France in the same era as in the future "Cathedral". However, the young author approached his task differently than his famous contemporary. Back in an 1823 article, Hugo wrote that “after the pictorial but prose novel of Walter Scott, another novel must be created that will be both drama and epic, pictorial but also poetic, filled with reality, but at the same time ideal, truthful.” This is exactly what the author of Notre Dame was trying to do.
As in dramas, Hugo turns to history in Notre Dame; this time it was the late French Middle Ages, Paris at the end of the 15th century that attracted his attention. The desire to overcome the neglect of the Middle Ages, which spread thanks to the writers of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, for whom this time was a kingdom of darkness and ignorance, played a role here, useless in the history of the progressive development of mankind. And, finally, almost mainly, the Middle Ages attracted romantics with their unusualness, as opposed to the prose of bourgeois life, a dull everyday existence. Here one could meet, the romantics believed, with solid, great characters, strong passions, exploits and martyrdom in the name of convictions. All this was perceived even in a halo of some mystery associated with the insufficient study of the Middle Ages, which was replenished by an appeal to folk traditions and legends, which had special significance for romantic writers. Subsequently, in the preface to the collection of his historical poems “Legend of the Ages”, Hugo paradoxically states that the legend should be equated in rights with history: “The human race can be considered from two points of view: from historical and legendary. The second is no less true than the first. The first is no less conjectural than the second.” The Middle Ages appears in Hugo's novel as a story-legend against the backdrop of a masterfully recreated historical flavor.
The basis, the core of this legend is, in general, unchanged for the entire creative path of the mature Hugo, the view of the historical process as an eternal confrontation between two world principles - good and evil, mercy and cruelty, compassion and intolerance, feelings and reason. The field of this battle and different eras attracts attention Hugo to an immeasurably greater extent than the analysis of a specific historical situation. Hence the well-known historicalism, the symbolism of Hugo's heroes, the timeless nature of his psychologism. Hugo himself frankly admitted that history as such did not interest him in the novel: overview and in fits and starts, the state of customs, beliefs, laws, arts, and finally, civilization in the fifteenth century. However, this is not the main thing in the book. If she has one merit, it is that she is a work of imagination, whimsy and fantasy.”
It is known that for the descriptions of the cathedral and Paris in the 15th century, the image of the mores of the era, Hugo studied considerable historical material and allowed himself to show off his knowledge, as he did in his other novels. Researchers of the Middle Ages meticulously checked Hugo's "documentation" and could not find any serious errors in it, despite the fact that the writer did not always draw his information from primary sources.
Nevertheless, the main thing in the book, to use Hugo's terminology, is “fantasy and fantasy”, that is, that which was entirely created by his imagination and can be connected with history to a very small extent. The widest popularity of the novel is ensured by the eternal ethical problems posed in it and the fictitious characters of the first plan, who have long since passed (primarily Quasimodo) into the category of literary types.

3.1. Story Organization
The novel is built on a dramatic principle: three men achieve the love of one woman; the gypsy Esmeralda is loved by the archdeacon of Notre Dame Cathedral Claude Frollo, the bell ringer of the cathedral, the hunchback Quasimodo and the poet Pierre Gringoire, although the main rivalry arises between Frollo and Quasimodo. At the same time, the gypsy gives her feelings to the handsome but empty nobleman Phoebus de Chateauper.
Hugo's novel-drama can be divided into five acts. In the first act, Quasimodo and Esmeralda, not yet seeing each other, appear on the same stage. This scene is the Greve Square. Esmeralda dances and sings here, and here a procession passes, with comic solemnity carrying the pope of jesters Quasimodo on a stretcher. The general merriment is confused by the grim menace of the bald man: “Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” The bewitching voice of Esmeralda is interrupted by the terrible cry of the recluse of the Roland Tower: “Will you get out of here, Egyptian locust?” The game of antitheses closes on Esmeralda, all plot threads are drawn to her. And it is no coincidence that the festive bonfire, illuminating her beautiful face, illuminates the gallows at the same time. This is not just a spectacular contrast - this is the plot of a tragedy. The action of the tragedy, which began with the dance of Esmeralda on the Greve Square, will end here - with her execution.
Every word uttered on this stage is full of tragic irony. The threats of a bald man, the archdeacon of Notre Dame Cathedral Claude Frollo, are not dictated by hatred, but by love, but such love is even worse than hatred. Passion turns a dry scribe into a villain, ready to do anything to take possession of his victim. In a cry: "Sorcery!" - a harbinger of Esmeralda's future troubles: rejected by her, Claude Frollo will relentlessly pursue her, betray her to the inquisition, doom her to death.
Surprisingly, the curses of the recluse are also inspired by great love. She became a voluntary prisoner, grieving for her only daughter, who was stolen by gypsies many years ago. Invoking heavenly and earthly punishments on Esmeralda's head, the unfortunate mother does not suspect that the beautiful gypsy is the daughter she is mourning. Curses will come true. At the decisive moment, the tenacious fingers of the recluse will not allow Esmeraldes to hide, they will detain her out of revenge for the entire gypsy tribe, who deprived her mother of her ardently beloved daughter. To enhance the tragic intensity, the author will force the recluse to recognize her child in Esmeralda - by memorable signs. But even recognition will not save the girl: the guards are already close, the tragic denouement is inevitable.
In the second act, the one who yesterday was a “triumphant” - the pope of jesters, becomes “condemned” (again, a contrast). After Quasimodo was punished with whips and left at the pillory to be mocked by the crowd, two people appear on the stage of the Greve Square, whose fate is inextricably linked with the fate of the hunchback. First, Claude Frollo approaches the pillory. It was he who picked up the once ugly child thrown into the temple, raised him and made him the bell ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral. Since childhood, Quasimodo has been accustomed to revere his savior and now expects him to come to the rescue again. But no, Claude Frollo passes by, treacherously lowering his eyes. And then Esmeralda appears at the pillory. Between the fates of the hunchback and the beauty there is an initial connection. After all, it was him, the freak, that the gypsies put in the manger from which they stole her, a lovely little one. And now she is climbing the stairs to the suffering Quasimodo and, the only one from the whole crowd, taking pity on him, gives him water. From that moment on, love awakens in Quasimodo's chest, filled with poetry and heroic self-sacrifice.
If in the first act voices are of particular importance, and in the second - gestures, then in the third - looks. The point of intersection of views becomes the dancing Esmeralda. The poet Gringoire, who is next to her in the square, looks at the girl with sympathy: she recently saved his life. The captain of the royal shooters, Phoebus de Chateauper, with whom Esmeralda fell in love at the first meeting, looks at her from the balcony of a Gothic house - this is a look of voluptuousness. At the same time, from above, the north tower of the cathedral, Claude Frollo looks at the gypsy - this is a look of gloomy, despotic passion. And even higher, on the bell tower of the cathedral, Quasimodo froze, looking at the girl with great love.
In the fourth act, the dizzying swing of antithesis swings to the limit: Quasimodo and Esmeralda must now switch roles. Once again the crowd has gathered on Greve Square - and again all eyes are fixed on the gypsy. But now she, accused of attempted murder and witchcraft, is waiting for the gallows. The girl was declared the murderer of Phoebus de Chateauper - the one whom she loves more than life. And it is confessed by the one who actually wounded the captain - the true criminal Claude Frollo. To complete the effect, the author makes Phoebus himself, who survived after being wounded, see the gypsy tied up and going to execution. "Phoebus! My Phoebus!” - Esmeralda shouts to him "in a burst of love and delight." She expects that the captain of the shooters, in accordance with his name (Phoebus - "the sun", "the beautiful shooter who was a god"), will become her savior, but he cowardly turns away from her. Esmeralda will be saved by an ugly warrior, but by an ugly, outcast bell-ringer. The hunchback will go down the sheer wall, snatch the gypsy from the hands of the executioners and lift her up - to the bell tower of Notre Dame Cathedral. So, before ascending the scaffold, Esmeralda, a girl with a winged soul, will find a temporary refuge in heaven - among singing birds and bells.
In the fifth act, the time comes for the tragic denouement - the decisive battle and execution on Greve Square. Thieves and crooks, inhabitants of the Parisian Court of Miracles, besiege the Notre Dame Cathedral, and Quasimodo alone defends it heroically. The tragic irony of the episode lies in the fact that both sides are fighting each other to save Esmeralda: Quasimodo does not know that the army of thieves has come to free the girl, the besiegers do not know that the hunchback, protecting the cathedral, is protecting the gypsy.
“Ananke” - rock - with this word, read on the wall of one of the towers of the cathedral, the novel begins. At the behest of fate, Esmeralda will give herself away by shouting the name of her beloved again: “Phoebus! To me, my Phoebus!” - and thereby destroy himself. Claude Frollo will inevitably and himself fall into that “fatal knot” with which he “pulled the gypsy”. Fate will force the pupil to kill his benefactor: Quasimodo will throw Claude Frollo off the balustrade of Notre Dame Cathedral. Only those whose characters are too small for tragedy will escape tragic fate. About the poet Gringoire and the officer Phoebus deChatoper, the author will say with irony: they “ended tragically” - the first will just return to dramaturgy, the second will marry. The novel ends with the antithesis of the petty and the tragic. Phoebe's usual marriage is opposed to a fatal marriage, a marriage to death. Many years later, decrepit remains will be found in the crypt - the skeleton of Quasimodo, hugging the skeleton of Esmeralda. When they want to separate them from each other, Quasimodo's skeleton will become dust.
Romantic pathos appeared in Hugo already in the very organization of the plot. The history of the gypsy Esmeralda, the archdeacon of Notre Dame Cathedral Claude Frollo, the bell ringer Quasimodo, the captain of the royal shooters Phoebus de Chateauper and other characters associated with them is full of secrets, unexpected turns of action, fatal coincidences and accidents. The fates of the characters are bizarrely crossed. Quasimodo tries to steal Esmeralda on the orders of Claude Frollo, but the girl is accidentally rescued by a guard led by Phoebus. For the attempt on Esmeralda, Quasimodo is punished. But it is she who gives the unfortunate hunchback a sip of water when he stands at the pillory, and with her good deed transforms him.
There is a purely romantic, instant breaking of character: Quasimodo turns from a rough animal into a man and, having fallen in love with Esmeralda, objectively finds himself in a confrontation with Frollo, who plays a fatal role in the girl's life.
The fates of Quasimodo and Esmeralda are closely intertwined in the distant past. Esmeralda was stolen by gypsies as a child and received her exotic name among them (Esmeralda in Spanish means “emerald”), and they left an ugly baby in Paris, who was then taken up by Claude Frollo, naming him in Latin (Quasimodo translates as “unfinished”), but also in France Quasimodo is the name of the Red Hill holiday, in which Frollo picked up the baby.
Hugo brings the emotional intensity of the action to the limit, depicting Esmeralda's unexpected meeting with her mother, the recluse of the Roland Tower Gudula, who all the time hates the girl, considering her a gypsy. This meeting takes place literally a few minutes before Esmeralda's execution, which her mother tries in vain to save. But fatal at this moment is the appearance of Phoebus, whom the girl passionately loves and whom, in her blindness, she trusts in vain. It is impossible not to notice, therefore, that the reason for the tense development of events in the novel is not only chance, an unexpected set of circumstances, but also the spiritual impulses of the characters, human passions: passion makes Frollo pursue Esmeralda, which becomes the impetus for the development of the central intrigue of the novel; love and compassion for the unfortunate girl determine the actions of Quasimodo, who manages to steal her from the hands of the executioners for a while, and a sudden insight, indignation at the cruelty of Frollo, who met the execution of Esmeralda with hysterical laughter, turns the ugly ringer into an instrument of just retribution.

3.2. The system of characters in the novel
The action in the novel “Notre Dame Cathedral” takes place at the end of the 15th century. The novel opens with a picture of a noisy folk festival in Paris. Here is a motley crowd of townspeople and townswomen; and Flemish merchants and artisans who arrived as ambassadors to France; and the Cardinal of Bourbon, also university students, beggars, royal archers, the street dancer Esmeralda, and the fantastically ugly bell-ringer of Quasimodo Cathedral. Such is the wide range of images that appear before the reader.
As in other works of Hugo, the characters are sharply divided into two camps. The writer's democratic views are also confirmed by the fact that he finds high moral qualities only in the lower classes of medieval society - the street dancer Esmeralda and the ringer Quasimodo. Whereas the frivolous aristocrat Phoebus de Chateauper, the religious fanatic Claude Frollo, the noble judge, the royal prosecutor and the king himself embody the immorality and cruelty of the ruling classes.
Notre Dame Cathedral is a romantic work in style and method. In it you can find everything that was characteristic of Hugo's dramaturgy. It contains exaggerations and a game of contrasts, a poeticization of the grotesque, and an abundance of exceptional situations in the plot. The essence of the image is revealed by Hugo not so much on the basis of character development, but rather in opposition to another image.
The system of images in the novel is based on the theory of the grotesque developed by Hugo and the principle of contrast. The characters line up in clearly marked contrasting pairs: the freak Quasimodo and the beautiful Esmeralda, also Quasimodo and the outwardly irresistible Phoebus; an ignorant ringer - a learned monk who knew all the medieval sciences; Claude Frollo also opposes Phoebus: one is an ascetic, the other is immersed in the pursuit of entertainment and pleasure. Gypsy Esmeralda is opposed by the blond Fleur-de-Lys - Phoebe's bride, a rich, educated girl and belonging to the highest society. The relationship between Esmeralda and Phoebus is also based on contrast: the depth of love, tenderness and subtlety of feelings in Esmeralda - and the insignificance, vulgarity of the foppish nobleman Phoebus.
The internal logic of Hugo's romantic art leads to the fact that the relationship between sharply contrasting characters acquires an exceptional, exaggerated character.
Quasimodo, Frollo and Phoebus all three love Esmeralda, but in their love each appears as the antagonist of the other. Phoebus needs a love affair for a while, Frollo burns with passion, hating Esmeralda as the object of his desires. Quasimodo loves the girl selflessly and disinterestedly; he opposes Phoebus and Frollo as a person, devoid of even a drop of egoism in his feeling and, thereby, rises above them. Embittered by the whole world, the hardened freak Quasimodo, love transforms, awakening in him a good, human beginning. In Claude Frollo, love, on the contrary, awakens the beast. The opposition of these two characters determines the ideological sound of the novel. As conceived by Hugo, they embody two basic human types.
Thus, a new plan of contrast arises: the external appearance and internal content of the character: Phoebus is handsome, but internally dull, mentally poor; Quasimodo is ugly on the outside, but beautiful on the inside.
Thus, the novel is built as a system of polar oppositions. These contrasts are not just an artistic device for the author, but a reflection of his ideological positions, the concept of life. Opposing polar principles seems to Hugo's romance eternal in life, but at the same time, as already mentioned, he wants to show the movement of history. According to Boris Revizov, a researcher of French literature, Hugo considers the change of epochs - the transition from the early Middle Ages to the late, that is, to the Renaissance period - as a gradual accumulation of goodness, spirituality, a new attitude to the world and to oneself.
In the center of the novel, the writer put the image of Esmeralda and made her the embodiment of spiritual beauty and humanity. The creation of a romantic image is facilitated by the bright characteristics that the author gives to the appearance of his person.

The novel "Notre Dame Cathedral", created on the verge of sentimentalism and romanticism, combines the features of a historical epic, a romantic drama and a deeply psychological novel.

History of the creation of the novel

"Notre Dame Cathedral" is the first historical novel in French (the action, according to the author's intention, takes place about 400 years ago, at the end of the 15th century). Victor Hugo began nurturing his idea as early as the 1820s, and published it in March 1831. The prerequisites for the creation of the novel were the rising interest in historical literature and in particular in the Middle Ages.

In the literature of France of that time, romanticism began to take shape, and with it romantic tendencies in cultural life in general. So, Victor Hugo personally defended the need to preserve ancient architectural monuments, which many wanted to either demolish or rebuild.

There is an opinion that it was after the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" that the supporters of the demolition of the cathedral retreated, and an incredible interest in cultural monuments and a wave of civic consciousness arose in society in the desire to protect ancient architecture.

Characteristics of the main characters

It is this reaction of society to the book that gives the right to say that the cathedral is the true protagonist of the novel, along with people. This is the main place of events, a silent witness to dramas, love, life and death of the main characters; a place that, against the backdrop of the transience of human lives, remains just as motionless and unshakable.

The main characters in human form are the gypsy Esmeralda, the hunchback Quasimodo, the priest Claude Frollo, the military Phoebe de Chateauper, the poet Pierre Gringoire.

Esmeralda unites the rest of the main characters around her: all of the listed men are in love with her, but some are selflessly, like Quasimodo, others are furious, like Frollo, Phoebus and Gringoire, experiencing carnal attraction; the gypsy herself loves Phoebe. In addition, all the characters are connected by the Cathedral: Frollo serves here, Quasimodo works as a bell ringer, Gringoire becomes a priest's apprentice. Esmeralda usually performs in front of the Cathedral Square, and Phoebus looks out the windows of his future wife, Fleur-de-Lys, who lives near the Cathedral.

Esmeralda is a serene child of the streets, unaware of her attractiveness. She dances and performs in front of the Cathedral with her goat, and everyone around from the priest to street thieves give her their hearts, revering her like a deity. With the same childish spontaneity with which a child reaches for shiny objects, Esmeralda gives her preference to Phoebus, a noble, brilliant chevalier.

The external beauty of Phoebus (coincides with the name of Apollo) is the only positive feature of an internally ugly military man. A deceitful and dirty seducer, a coward, a lover of booze and foul language, only in front of the weak is he a hero, only in front of the ladies is he a cavalier.

Pierre Gringoire, a local poet forced by circumstances to plunge into the thick of French street life, is a bit like Phoebus in that his feelings for Esmeralda are a physical attraction. True, he is not capable of meanness, and loves both a friend and a person in a gypsy, setting aside her feminine charm.

The most sincere love for Esmeralda is nourished by the most terrible creature - Quasimodo, the bell ringer in the Cathedral, who was once picked up by the archdeacon of the temple, Claude Frollo. For Esmeralda, Quasimodo is ready for anything, even to love her quietly and secretly from everyone, even to give the girl to an opponent.

Claude Frollo has the most complex feelings for the gypsy. Love for a gypsy is a special tragedy for him, because it is a forbidden passion for him as a clergyman. Passion does not find a way out, so he either appeals to her love, then repels, then pounces on her, then saves her from death, and finally, he himself hands the gypsy to the executioner. The tragedy of Frollo is caused not only by the collapse of his love. He turns out to be a representative of the passing time and feels that he is becoming obsolete along with the era: a person receives more and more knowledge, moves away from religion, builds a new one, destroys the old. Frollo holds the first printed book in his hands and understands how he disappears without a trace into the centuries along with handwritten folios.

Plot, composition, problematics of the work

The novel is set in the 1480s. All the actions of the novel take place around the Cathedral - in the "City", on the Cathedral and Greve squares, in the "Court of Miracles".

In front of the Cathedral they give a religious performance (the author of the mystery is Gringoire), but the crowd prefers to watch Esmeralda dance in the Place Greve. Looking at the gypsy, Gringoire, Quasimodo, and Father Frollo fall in love with her at the same time. Phoebus meets Esmeralda when she is invited to entertain a company of girls, including Phoebus' fiancee, Fleur de Lis. Phoebus makes an appointment with Esmeralda, but the priest also comes to the appointment. Out of jealousy, the priest wounds Phoebus, and Esmeralda is blamed for this. Under torture, the girl confesses to witchcraft, prostitution and the murder of Phoebus (who actually survived) and is sentenced to be hanged. Claude Frollo comes to her in prison and persuades her to run away with him. On the day of the execution, Phoebus watches the execution of the sentence along with his bride. But Quasimodo does not allow the execution to take place - he grabs the gypsy and runs to hide in the Cathedral.

The entire "Court of Miracles" - a haven of thieves and beggars - rushes to "liberate" their beloved Esmeralda. The king found out about the rebellion and ordered the gypsy to be executed at all costs. As she is being executed, Claude laughs a devilish laugh. Seeing this, the hunchback rushes at the priest, and he breaks, falling from the tower.

Compositionally, the novel is looped: at first, the reader sees the word “rock” inscribed on the wall of the Cathedral, and plunges into the past for 400 years, at the end, he sees two skeletons in a crypt outside the city, which are intertwined in an embrace. These are the heroes of the novel - a hunchback and a gypsy. Time has erased their history to dust, and the Cathedral still stands as an indifferent observer of human passions.

The novel depicts both private human passions (the problem of purity and meanness, mercy and cruelty) and people's (wealth and poverty, isolation of power from the people). For the first time in European literature, the personal drama of the characters develops against the background of detailed historical events, and private life and historical background are so interpenetrating.

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