Customer Reviews

Notre-Dame De Paris

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The novel which is so poorly mistranslated as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" is one which sadly few people have read. Disney has done this novel a great injustice. Hugo paints an elaborate and incredible picture of 15th-century Paris. The main character is not Quasimodo, the infamous hunchback, but rather the cathedral of Notre Dame itself. It is a complex and powerful character who shifts dramatically depending on who percieves it. Hugo is a brilliant writer; each image is beautiful, each line a poem. The book is four hundred pages of pure poetry. I highly recommend this novel for anyone who appreciates good literature.

I still do not have the faintest idea as to why Disney could possibly make this book into a children's movie. First of all, I would rate the unabridged book itself "PG-13"...but anyway. This book, more popularly known as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (even though the plot circles around the Cathedral, not Quasimodo) is like a twisted "Romeo and Juliet" story sans star-crossed lovers. The real protagonist (in my opinion) is Esmarelda, the sixteen year old gypsy dancer. She falls passionatly in love with the chauvanistic stuff-shirt Captain Pheobus whotakes advatage of her love while meanwhile courting a young, rich noblewoman. Meanwhile, both Quasimodo the deaf bell-ringer and Claude Frollo the fanatical archdeacon fall madly in love with Esmerelda. So naturally things get quite chaotic when the gypsy is sentanced to death for "murdering" the captain. The action so is spectacular, especially the siege of Notre Dame, that I almost forgot I was reading it, not actually standing in Place de la Greve watching it all happen. Hopefully I don't give too much away when I say yes, there is a heck of a lot of dying going on throughout the book. This book, unfortunately, does have its long, slow, boring parts too...such as the beginning--just get through it and you'll be alright. And unless you are an ardent scholar of mideival architecture or French history, go ahead and skip the chapters titled "Notre-Dame" and "A birds eye view of Paris". P.S: my favorite part...Esmarelda's "marriage" to Pierre Gringiore, and also Gringiore's unhealthy obsession with the gypsy's goat

Unlike a great number of the people giving this book a positive review, I was and still am a fan of Disney's movie. Yes, the movie distorted the book quite liberally--but this is to be expected of a children's film adaptation. I view the movie's existence as positive since it encourages older fans of the movie to go and seek Hugo's book to get the complete story. It is a sad fact that most people have never read the book, however, the Disney movie brought attention back to it--a victory, in my opinion.

As far as the book itself, it was marvelous! Hugo's writing style is ornate and an artistic work in itself. As far as who the main character is, I would daresay that this is up to the reader's interpretation. I agree with the fact that the British translation regarding the title is misleading, as I find Quasimodo to be a bit distant from the focus of the book.

Hugo seemed to be preoccupied with portraying both Notre Dame and 15th Century Parisian society when writing this book. From that stance, it would seem as though both Cathedral and time period were the protagonists of the story.

As far as in-context, living characters, I would again like to state that Quasimodo is not whom I would nominate as protagonist. Esmeralda is a tempting choice, however, she is not given too much detail as far as personality. I would daresay that the most developed character in the book is the antagonist, Claude Frollo. I could write volumes on this character alone, as he is my favourite. If he weren't already antagonist, I would deem him a good candidate for protagonist.

Ah, Claude Frollo. He is the main reason behind my love for the book. (To Disney fans--his story does not unfold as in the movie!) I find his constant struggles and painful past to be some of the most intriguing parts of the book. The parts which included dialogue predominantly on his part were certainly my favourite ones. Claude and his constant battle with his feelings, his devotion, his jealousy and his belief in fate colour the book like no other character could.

Ultimately, the message of the book is that appearances are deceptive. Hugo portrays this most obviously with Quasimodo. In my opinion, however, he gives the reader this message through every main character. Phoebus, for example, is at first presented as a gallant officer who rescues Esmeralda but later turns out to be a vulgar womanizer. Clopin is first encountered as a mere beggar but is in fact the king of the Gypsies, holding power within his circle of vagabonds. Quasimodo is first thought of as a monster but is given a more tender place in the reader's heart by the conclusion of the book. Esmeralda is described as beautiful and she at first shows mercy to both Gringoire and Quasimodo, but is later revealed as superficial and vulgar in her taste for men. Claude Frollo appears as a studious priest, but is in reality a passionate, tortured spirit and so much more.

To all, I encourage you to read this book! You will feel what the characters feel as your eyes follow Hugo's words. I recall with clarity reading the part where Claude observes as Phoebus attempts to manipulate Esmeralda for his own purpose and, enraged, stabs the captain with Esmeralda's dagger. I remember how my stomach turned as I read. I could feel Claude Frollo's every emotion. It was like magic. It was, in fact, magic. The magic of excellent literature!

The fact that this Oxford edition chooses to retain the novel's original French title ("Notre-Dame de Paris") rather than its English counterpart ("The Hunchback of Notre-Dame"), which Hugo famously disliked for misrepresenting the book's contents, was encouraging to me when I found it in the bookstore. I've tried reading several other translations in the past including Walter Cobb's for Signet Classics and Catherine Liu's revised translation for Modern Library, but never could get beyond the first few chapters. I had also read and loved two other Hugo novels ("Les Miserables" and "The Man Who Laughs"), and couldn't understand why this famous novel never appealed to me.

This is the first version I was able to finish and I credit that to Alban Krailsheimer's extremely readable and vivid translation. He renders Hugo's often labyrinthine prose with great sensitivity, clarity, and eloquence. Readers who have read other translations may be surprised by the novel's bawdiness, eroticism, and humor. Hugo emerges as a very contemporary, imaginative writer. This is not only the best translation of a Victor Hugo novel I've read, but is simply one of the best translations of any work into English I have come across. As with other books in the Oxford World's Classics series, this edition comes with an introduction (tracing Hugo's sources; although, since it includes some spoiler material, you may want to wait until after you have finished the novel to read it) and comprehensive and explanatory notes throughout the text.

This is one of two translations recommended by Hugo biographer Graham Robb, the other being John Sturrock's translation for Penguin Classics which I've also picked up. Sturrock's translation is also very good. However, the Penguin edition lacks the Oxford's erudite textual notes in which Krailsheimer explains Hugo's obscure historical references to Medieval Parisian locales, articles of clothing, literature, social cohorts, and his appendix on Medieval French currency. This material is critical in understanding the milieu of the characters and for appreciating the sheer depth of research and detail Hugo wove into this novel. As such, I still recommend the Oxford edition.

I still do not have the faintest idea as to why Disney could possibly make this book into a children's movie. First of all, I would rate the unabridged book itself "PG-13"...but anyway. This book, more popularly known as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (even though the plot circles around the Cathedral, not Quasimodo) is like a twisted "Romeo and Juliet" story sans star-crossed lovers. The real protagonist (in my opinion) is Esmarelda, the sixteen year old gypsy dancer. She falls passionatly in love with the chauvanistic stuff-shirt Captain Pheobus whotakes advatage of her love while meanwhile courting a young, rich noblewoman. Meanwhile, both Quasimodo the deaf bell-ringer and Claude Frollo the fanatical archdeacon fall madly in love with Esmerelda. So naturally things get quite chaotic when the gypsy is sentanced to death for "murdering" the captain. The action so is spectacular, especially the siege of Notre Dame, that I almost forgot I was reading it, not actually standing in Place de la Greve watching it all happen. Hopefully I don't give too much away when I say yes, there is a heck of a lot of dying going on throughout the book. This book, unfortunately, does have its long, slow, boring parts too...such as the beginning--just get through it and you'll be alright. And unless you are an ardent scholar of mideival architecture or French history, go ahead and skip the chapters titled "Notre-Dame" and "A birds eye view of Paris". P.S: my favorite part...Esmarelda's "marriage" to Pierre Gringiore, and also Gringiore's unhealthy obsession with the gypsy's goat :-)

"Notre Dame de Paris", better known by its English title "Hunchback of Notre Dame", suprised me with its applicability to the modern technological world. When I thought how unlikely events seemed and how painfully unsympathetic were most of the main characters, the story seemed poised to disappoint. But by the end I realized the fatal tragedy of the events and the effectiveness of Hugo's social commentary. All in all a wonderful book. It has inspired me to dig out Johnson's history of art to read again the history of gothic art. The book is more about architecture than about the hunchback, and events surrounding Claude Frollo, Quasimodo and Esmeralda seem to take a back seat to Hugo's passion for gothic architecture and its demise at the hands of modern "improvements".

What surprised me most was an analogy by Hugo that presages technological advances of today, in particular the internet. In Book V Hugo describes the revolutionary advance made by the printing press and how it replaced architecture as the historical language for human ideas: "The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother of revolutions. It is humanity's mode of expression totally renewed, human thought discarding one form and putting on another... In the form of printing, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, elusive, indestructible. It blends with the air. In the time of architecture it became a mountain and took forceful possession of an age and a space. Now it becomes a flock of birds, scatters to the four winds and simultaneously occupies every point of air and space." If one did not know Hugo wrote this in the nineteenth century, one might easily think he was writing about the revolutionary nature of the internet as a vehicle for the expression of human ideas when compared to traditional publishing. Hugo calls printing "the second Tower of Babel of the human race." If he were still writing today, no doubt he might call the internet "the Third Tower of Babel."

The story takes place in 1482 and 1483, when Paris's center was, as today, the Ile de France, surrounded by the Seine, where there emerges the marvelous Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, a work of the people, of the years, and of Gothic architecture. The book begins with the popular festival where Quasimodo is crowned as Ugly King. Quasimodo is a deformed creature: hunchback, deaf, blind in one eye, but in posession of an extraordinary physical strength. Abandoned, as a four-year-old, at the Cathedral's gate, he was adopted by Claude Frollo, the arch-deacon of the cathedral, a nobleman with a tragic story and a younger brother who, in spite of having been nurtured and loved by Claude, has betrayed him with his licentious and illegal behavior. Frollo hates women, in particular the young gypsy Esmeralda, a lovely young girl who, with her white goat, dances, sings, and divines the future, to the scandal of the good consciences, including Frollo.

This is one of the most powerful stories ever created, a masterful adventure into the depths of the late Middle Ages. Surrounding the tragic love story between Esmeralda and the Hunchback of Notre Dame is a deep reflection on the demise of Medieval times and the slow but inevitable onset of the Renaissance. Hugo inserts chapters about the Cathedral's history and the description of Medieval Paris, its different neighborhoods and urbanistic setting. Frollo explains, to his astonished listeners, how and why the invention of printed books will mean the death of Architecture, at least as an art. "The book will kill the building", he says, because the printed book "is the greatest event of humanity. It is the mother of Revolutions". Before the press, the Church was able to control thought and speech. People expresed themselves in architecture, when they participated as artisans in the construction of public buildings, true works of the people. Not anymore: the book will allow a clearer and more powerful means of expression; fluid, eternally changing, from then on literature will be the most transparent way to express oneself. We know the printed book precipitated the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaisssance and Modernity, but Frollo submerges into bitterness and his terrible sexual frustration: he hates Esmeralda because he desires her immensely.

The plot thickens with the whole crazy, tragic love story involving the pretty gypsy, the hunchback, the captain with whom Esmeralda falls in love, Frollo, his brother, the mad crowds, and king Louis XI, sending his troops to take the cathedral. Impossible literature in our days, "Our Lady of Paris" is a prodigy of imagination, of the recreation of a bygone world, of an integral work which articulates history, political and ecclesiastical power, and the whole of society, from the rich and noble, and the bourgeois, to the miserable and criminal rubbish, peopled by unique characters, yet a reflection of their time and place. In spite of being a somber and desolate story, Hugo tells it with an epic tone, not a sociological one, and therefore makes it an endearing and not a sordid story. I wonder what Dostoevsky would have made with this material!

An emblem of Western culture, it is much more than a story, because it includes a grand reflection on the age: architecture and the printing press, a changing society, urbanism and people.

For readers familiar with Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris" in the original French, translations into English of the nineteenth century and considerably later can be jolting. This especially applies to the dialogue of the novel. While characters with less formal education, including Esmeralda, are allowed to speak the "standard" English of the translator's period, a man of Claude Frollo's erudition is compelled to articulate in archaisms ("Thy dancing whirled in my brain; ... All at once thou didst begin to sing. ... At length thou didst, perhaps, take pity on me ..."). This falsifies the speech of such characters in the original, which is essentially that of an educated Parisian of 1831.

In 1978, the novel was delivered from latter-day Jacobeans by John Sturrock, whose vigorous translation is still in print from Penguin Classics. However, readers seeking the most accurate English rendition of Hugo's masterpiece should seriously consider Alban Krailsheimer's more recent version from Oxford World's Classics. In general, Krailsheimer is more appreciative of nuances of characterization. He manifests this awareness in translations that may be more conventional than Sturrock's, but which are also more attuned to the dramatic context in which particular words and phrases are employed. To cite one instance: in the dungeon where she awaits execution, Esmeralda laments: "J'ai froid, j'ai peur, et il y a des betes qui me montent le long du corps." Sturrock: "I'm cold, I'm frightened, and there are creatures that climb up my body." Krailsheimer: "I'm cold, I'm afraid, and there are creatures that climb over my body." Though both "up" and "over" are possible, Krailsheimer's "over my body" is less invasive, more consistent with Esmeralda's detachment from the body that was her medium of expression and the fact that (unlike women currently enduring such ordeals in modern theocracies) she has not been sexually violated by her captors. (It takes Hugo's archdeacon to attempt that.) A second example, from the last two sentences of the book: "L'homme auquel il avait appartenu était donc venu là, et il y était mort. Quand on voulut le détacher du squelette qu'il embrassait, il tomba en poussière." Sturrock: "The man to whom it had belonged must therefore have come there and have died there. When they tried to release him from the skeleton he was embracing, he crumbled into dust." Krailsheimer: "The man to whom the skeleton belonged had therefore come there himself, and died there. When they tried to remove it from the skeleton it embraced, it fell to dust." Ontologically (and, arguably, metaphysically), Krailsheimer's depersonalized "it" is surely preferable to Sturrock's "he."

In one significant respect, both translators do repeat a failing of their predecessors. They substitute quotation marks for the dashes with which Hugo heralds passages of dialogue. Through this punctuation (later employed so artfully by such writers as James Joyce), Hugo dovetails speech and description to maximum effect. As with all great literature, there is no substitute for the original, as the authors of these fine translations would be the first to concede. Both their versions can be heartily recommended, but Krailsheimer's is I believe the best.

Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

Any fan of great literature, beautiful prose, French history, architecture, or Victor Hugo will love this ebook. The novel is astonishingly imaginative, and includes powerful, disturbing and memorable scenes. Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the finest classics ever written.

This is the second time I've read Notre-Dame de Paris (the first time was with a different translator, but I don't see any real difference with the writing), and I certainly have a better understanding of the story. The book's main character is Notre-Dame, and the supporting characters are Claude Frollo, La Esmeralda, and Quasimodo. Frollo is the Archdeacon who lusts after La Esmeralda. Quasimodo is the hunchbacked bell-ringer of Notre-Dame. La Esmeralda is a 16-year old gypsy girl who is the target of witchcraft by the Parisians. What happens in the novel is sophisticated: basically Claude Frollo & Quasimodo fight for the love of Esmeralda, and it doesn't turn pretty as Esmeralda has fallen in love with Phoebus de Chateaupers, one of the King's captains.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed was Hugo's descriptions of the gothic cathedral itself. The chapter entitled "A Bird's-Eye View of Paris" is a pleasure to read. Another thing is the switching of POV's in every chapter; Hugo made a brilliant execution of this. Despite a few flaws here and there (such as Book Ten/Chapter Four interrupting the very important assault on Notre-Dame), "Notre-Dame de Paris" is of course a classic in the world of literature. And it's almost sad that most people recognize the book with only the english title "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Almost sad, because Quasimodo is not the central character. I hope more and more people will understand that the cathedral itself is the actual central character (even though it's not human).