Victor Hugo Victor Marie Hugo (French pronunciation: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism;[citation needed] his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. Personal life[edit] Hugo's childhood was a period of national political turmoil. Hélas ! Quoi donc ! Alas! what!
Medievalism Medievalism is the system of belief and practice characteristic of the Middle Ages, or devotion to elements of that period, which has been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture.[1] Since the 18th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the Pre-Raphaelite and arts and crafts movements and neo-medievalism (a term often used interchangeably with medievalism). Medievalism can also be used as an insult, implying conservatism and outdated attitudes. The words "medievalism" and "Medieval" are both first recorded in the 19th century. "Medieval" is derived from Latin medium aevum (Middle Ages). History[edit] Renaissance to Enlightenment[edit] Voltaire, one of the key Enlightenment critics of the medieval era Romanticism[edit] The Nazarenes[edit] Gothic revival[edit] Late nineteenth century[edit]
Age of Enlightenment 17th- to 18th-century European cultural movement The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was the intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17th and the 18th centuries.[1][2] The Enlightenment was preceded by and overlaps the Scientific Revolution and the work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, and Isaac Newton, among others, as well as the rationalist philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and John Locke. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the publication of René Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637, with his method of systematically disbelieving everything unless there was a well-founded reason for accepting it, and featuring his famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"). The central doctrines of the Enlightenment were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the power of religious authorities. [edit]
Naturalism (philosophy) Naturalism is "the idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world; (occas.) the idea or belief that nothing exists beyond the natural world."[1] Adherents of naturalism (i.e., naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws.[2] "Naturalism can intuitively be separated into a [metaphysical] and a methodological component In contrast, assuming naturalism in working methods, without necessarily considering naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailments, is called methodological naturalism.[5] The subject matter here is a philosophy of acquiring knowledge. With the exception of pantheists—who believe that Nature and God are one and the same thing—theists challenge the idea that nature is all there is. The term "methodological naturalism" for this approach is much more recent.
French Revolution The French Revolution (French: Révolution française) was an influential period of social and political upheaval in France that lasted from 1789 until 1799. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of theocracies and absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and democracies. Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. External threats closely shaped the course of the Revolution. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. Causes The French government faced a fiscal crisis in the 1780s, and King Louis XVI was blamed for mishandling these affairs. Adherents of most historical models identify many of the same features of the Ancien Régime as being among the causes of the Revolution. By the 1990s the Marxist class interpretation had largely been abandoned among scholars. Ancien Régime
Supernatural The supernatural (Medieval Latin: supernātūrālis: supra "above" + naturalis "nature", first used: 1520–30 AD)[1][2] is that which is not subject to the laws of physics, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature. In philosophy, popular culture and fiction, the supernatural is associated with the paranormal, religions and occultism. It has neoplatonic[3] and medieval scholastic[4] origins. In Catholicism[edit] Catholic theologians sometimes call supernatural the miraculous way in which certain effects, in themselves natural, are produced, or certain endowments (like man's immunity from death, suffering, passion, and ignorance) that bring the lower class up to the higher though always within the limits of the created, but they are careful in qualifying the former as accidentally supernatural (supernaturale per accidens) and the latter as relatively supernatural (prœternaturale). Process theology[edit] Contrasting views[edit] indistinct from nature.
Ancien Régime This article is about the administrative, judicial, and ecclesiastic structures of the Kingdom of France in the pre-revolutionary period. For a general history of France in this period, see Early modern France. For the political history of France in this period, see Kingdom of France. Much of the medieval political centralization of France had been lost in the Hundred Years' War, and the Valois Dynasty's attempts at re-establishing control over the scattered political centres of the country were hindered by the Wars of Religion. The need for centralization in this period was directly linked to the question of royal finances and the ability to wage war. One key to this centralization was the replacing of personal "clientele" systems organized around the king and other nobles by institutional systems around the state.[1] The creation of the Intendants—representatives of royal power in the provinces—did much to undermine local control by regional nobles. Terminology[edit] France in 1477.
Naturalism (arts) Realism in the arts may be generally defined as the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. The term originated in the 19th century, and was used to describe the work of Gustave Courbet and a group of painters who rejected idealization, focusing instead on everyday life.[1] In its most specific sense, Realism was an artistic movement that began in France in the 1850s, after the 1848 Revolution.[2] Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the late 18th century. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. In general, Realists depicted everyday subjects and situations in contemporary settings, and attempted to depict individuals of all social classes in a similar manner.
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo - Book Clubs The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other...treats the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Heaven to Hell, from Limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting point, and the point of arrival is the soul. —Victor Hugo, Les Misérables Twenty years in the conception and execution, Les Misérables was first published in France and Belgium in 1862, a year which found Victor Hugo in exile from his beloved France. The story is set between 1815 and 1832, the years of Hugo's youth. The Revolution and Republic of France had failed to redress the unconscionable social conditions in which many French citizens languished. Les Misérables vindicates those members of society forced by unemployment and starvation to commit crimes—in Jean Valjean's case, the theft of a loaf of bread—who are thereafter outcast from society.