Tracey’s Comments (group member since Jul 17, 2016)

Tracey’s comments from the Sir Walter Scott Appreciation group.

I have to admit that I couldn't get through Hugo's harangue about literature and architecture and picked up the story again at book 6 chapter 1.
1, Was the trial of Quasimodo just?

1. What is your impression of Claude Frollo?
2. What did he live for and how/why did this change?
3. How does Quasimodo feel about Frollo?
4. How does he feel about the cathedral, Notre-Dame? What does it represent for him?

Rosemarie wrote: "Tracey, that sculpture looks like a giant hula hoop."

Yes it does, and half as much fun. What a waste of public money. I have no problem with using such money for the beautification of a city to uplift and inspire people but this monstrosity is not that!

Lori wrote: "They use it several times:

Here is one:
Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a storm of applause, mingled with prodigious shouts, cut short their conversation. The Pope o..."

I found this:
'English speakers borrowed the word noel from French. It can be traced further back to the Latin word natalis, which can mean "birthday" as a noun or "of or relating to birth" as an adjective. (The English adjective natal has the same meaning and is also an offspring of natalis.). Noels were being sung in Latin or French for centuries before the word found its way into our language in the 1800s. The earliest known musical use of noel occurred in the text of a Christmas motet called "Nova vobis gaudia," which was written in the 1400s.'

You pointed out the discrimination based on birth and maybe this also tied in with Noel. Anyhow, your points were good ones.

Phoebus is Latin, from Greek Phoibos, from phoibos radiant.

What do you think to the names Quasimodo and Esmeralda?

Rosemarie wrote: "Hugo was actually exiled from France for his political beliefs and resided on the isle of Guernsey. He returned to France after the fall of the empire and eventually became a Senator."

I remember reading about that. Here in Alberta things are no better although there is not a long history here. The things they build are in general ugly

http://globalnews.ca/news/890505/pric...

Rosemarie wrote: "In response to question no. 6.
Hugo describes the changes that took place in Paris between the medieval times and the time he was writing. Another great change took place at the end of the 19th cen..."

Based on what he said in this book, I think he would have been dismayed. I think a lot of cities have been treated the same. We live in a very disposable society and things are hardly ever made or built to last as they once were. In a 1000 years I wonder what will be left to show of our time in history like we have the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the cathedrals and the great wall of China.

It is nice to know that reading has such an influence on the human mind and education. I also was very ill as a child and had long periods (up to a year at a time) when I could not attend school. I read everything my local library had. What I missed out on I am attempting to make up for now but still, I believe I had a good education.

I am very behind in reading this book but I have a week off over Christmas and intend to sit down and immerse myself in the pages of this book and not come up for air till my kids tell me it's time to eat. I will post in the threads as I read.

Book 2: This is 7 chapters long: (my answers after questions)

1. We meet Esmeralda. What are her origins? Who are her people and how are they described? Where does she live now?

She says to be a friend is to be, 'like a brother and sister, two souls meeting without mingling.' Do you agree?

Book 3: only 2 chapters but very descriptive.

1. What 3 things altered Notre-Dame? Which, in the opinion of the author, was the most destructive?

2. 'Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of ages.' Comment.

3. What was the Paris of the 15th century composed of?

4. Who ruled in each part?

5. Why does Hugo consider the Tuileries sacred?

6. Comment on this, 'Our fathers had a Paris of stone, our sons will have one of plaster.'

7. What is the opera worth hearing?

'At sunrise, from every steeple a column of sound, a cloud of harmony...one mass of sonorous vibrations, incessantly sent forth from the innumerable steeples-floating, undulating, bounding and edifying, over the town and extending beyond the horizon.

The tumult of bells and chimes-this furnace of music-these thousand voices of brass, all singing together in flutes of stone 300 feet high...this city is all one orchestra-this symphony as loud as a tempest.'

Even the very description causes my heart to rise within me. I remember hearing church bells ringing in my homeland and it is true that many together cause a deep reverential emotion in the human breast. To hear so many as Paris once displayed truly would be an opera worth hearing.

Book 1 is 6 chapters long. In it we are introduced to the place and time; Paris in 1482. The day is a January 6th and is the Feast of the Magi, or Twelfth night (Epiphany) and also the feast of fools. On this day the Dauphin of France is married to Princess Margaret of Flanders. Many important Flemish dignitaries are present along with church and state figures of France. The scene is within the Palace of Justice. By the end of book 1 we have met Quasimodo and Esmeralda's arrival has been noted with excitement by some but not yet seen by the reader.

1.What are your thoughts after reading book 1?

I do not have an explanatory notes in the edition I have so some of the references within the text I miss but the overall story is one of Medieval pomp and foolery, of dignitaries and plebeians or the common people, of beauty and wealth and poverty and ugliness. It seems to me that Hugo is showing the many sides of humanity.

2. Quasimodo means half-made. What do you think of this character?

He is a man deformed physically and limited by poverty. But nevertheless he appears strong and brave.

3. A line early in the book; "great events have incalculable consequences' struck me. Were there any that you noted?

It seemed to me that Hugo was setting the stage by using a staged event. He wanted to show the mass and variety of humanity and also the effects each has on others.

4. Victor Hugo was an admirer of Walter Scott. Can you tell this from his works?

5. Hugo wrote this book in his 20's and Les Miserables in his 60's when he had matured as a writer and grown wiser as a man. At the end of reading both books compare them for writing ability and knowledge of humanity.

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From Sparknotes:
Context
Written during the July 1830 Revolution, The Hunchback of Notre Dame was profoundly affected by the historical and political trends of the early nineteenth century. Victor Hugo was born at the beginning of the Napoleonic Empire in 1802 and began writing under the Restoration monarchy before becoming one of the most ardent supporters of the French Republic. After the 1789 French Revolution, French society was split into two parts: those who opposed the Republic and those who supported it. From the early days of his youth, Hugo identified with the themes of social and political equality that characterized the legacy of the French Revolution. Moreover, his father was a general in Napoleon's army and, as a result, Hugo was never a strong supporter of the monarchy that began in 1815 after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.


In July 1830, a new revolution occurred in Paris. The Bourbon family was deposed by the more liberal Orléans family, which supported a constitutional monarchy. Although Hugo did not think the revolution went far enough (he favored a republic), he celebrated the resurgence of the ideas of political liberty, democracy and universal suffrage that dated back to 1789. Hugo thus incorporated the political legacy of the these two revolutions into The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but was also inspired by the artistic and cultural representation of these social upheavals. For example, the political cartoons of Honoré Daumier and the paintings of Eugène Delacroix both made republicanism an aesthetic subject and focused on the city of Paris as a center of revolutionary ésprit. In Delacroix's famous depiction of the 1830 Revolution, Liberty Guiding the People, the two towers of Notre Dame can be seen in the background, evoking the mythic presence of Paris as a symbol of revolutionary fervor. Hugo greatly admired this painting, striving to represent Notre Dame as the cultural and political center of Paris.
Paris itself plays a major role in the novel. Hugo presents Paris as a place that can all be seen from the towers of Notre Dame, reaffirming its place as the center of Paris. The cathedral comes to represent Paris's "Gothic heart," and remind readers of its resplendent past. Even though most of this past has been swept away, Hugo compares the city to a living creature, "talking," "singing," "breathing," and "growing" everyday. He argues that Paris is on the verge of a major change that will forever erase its Gothic past. By evoking the Cité, the Ville, and the Université divisions of the fifteenth century, Hugo presents the reader with a version of Paris that might soon disappear. Indeed, within twenty years of the publication of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Napoleon III and Baron von Haussmann began a massive rebuilding program throughout most of the city, tearing down old quarters and widening streets into boulevards. Artists who had embraced Hugo's movement to safeguard the past were horrified, while Hugo himself moved into self-imposed exile.
Finally, The Hunchback of Notre Dame must be examined in its literary context. Hugo was a pioneer of the Romantic movement, which stressed the individual experience of imagination and emotions. Romanticism was predominantly a reaction against classicism, which found its subjects in Greek and Roman antiquity. For example, the great seventeenth and eighteenth French playwrights Racine and Corneille used Roman and Greek stories for their plays. Romantics stayed away from themes dealing with the past as much as possible. But Hugo broke the mold, boldly suggesting that Romantic themes could be extracted from the recent past of France. One of his major goals in The Hunchback of Notre Dame was to prove that French history offered a rich variety of subjects to represent Romantic ideals and themes.

Rosemarie wrote: "The French title is Notre Dame de Paris, which reflects the focus of the book more accurately than the English title does. However, Quasimodo is certainly the most well known character and plays a ..."

Rosemarie, are you reading the book in French? If so it would be good to see how well the book has been translated into English.

The novel has 11 books and the reading schedule will be:
week 1: Book 1, 2 & 3
week 2: Book 4, 5 & 6
Week 3: Book 7, 8 & 9
Week 4: Book 10 & 11

Rosemarie wrote: "Waverley can be considered an historical coming of age novel, in German called a Bildungsroman. They are a staple of 19th century German literature, and also the French to some degree. Scott is goo..."

I am enjoying Scott's reference to education. 200 years ago he was concerned about the same things that concern me in education; Edward was learning for amusement and not learning to train his mind to think and study.

He was 'losing forever the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and incumbent application, of gaining the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his own mind for earnest investigation.'

Thoughts?

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