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Hillary Clinton Biography

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Who is Victor Hugo?

Novelist, poet, playwright, dramatist, essayist, and statesman Victor Marie Hugo is widely regarded as one of the nineteenth century's most significant Romantic writers. Hugo, like many Romantics, was born and raised in a royalist Catholic family and would rebel against the conservative political and ecclesiastical establishment in favour of liberal republicanism and the revolutionary cause. Hugo, like Gustave Flaubert, was outraged by imperial France's corruption and the Church's role in social inequities, and he devoted most of his energy (in fiction and essays) to destroy the monarchy.


Hugo was much more than a political activist, despite his substantial contributions to the revolutionary cause. He was one of his generation's most outstanding writers. Hugo, like Charles Dickens in England, became a hero to the working masses, who saw him as a hero who exposed the dark side of French society.


Les Miserables author, Hugo was regarded as an important figure in the literary world, and he is still regarded as such. With the exception of François-René de Chateaubriand, Hugo is credited with ushering in the literary movement of Romanticism in France, which would go on to become one of the most significant movements in history of French and European literature.


Hugo introduced the lyrical style of German and English Romantic poets into the French language through his poetry, which is regarded as equal to his widely translated novels in France. This effectively set in motion a sea-change in the style of nineteenth-century French poetry. Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles are two volumes of poetry that have received a lot of praise from critics. Victor Hugo wrote the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (often translated into English (to Hugo's chagrin) as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) which are his most well-known works in the English-speaking world.


Hugo is a legendary character in French literature and politics, as well as the Romanticism movement in the West.


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Information About Victor Hugo

Birthdate: 26 February 1802

Birthplace: Besançon, France

Death date: 22 May 1885

Death Place: Paris, France

Age: 83 years old

Genre: Novel, poetry, theatre

Notable Victor Hugo books: Les Misérables, Ruy Blas, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Literary Movement: Romanticism

Spouse: Adèle Foucher ​(m. 1822; died 1868)


Victor Marie Hugo Early Life and Influences

Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1773–1828) and Sophie Trébuchet had a son named Victor Hugo (1772-1821). He was born in Besançon (in the Franche-Comté area) in 1802 and spent the majority of his life in France. During Napoleon III's reign, he was driven into exile, living briefly in Brussels in 1851, Jersey from 1852 to 1855, and Guernsey from 1855 until his return to France in 1870.


Hugo had a tumultuous childhood. The downfall of the Bourbon Dynasty in the French Revolution, the emergence and fall of the First Republic, and the development of the First French Empire and dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte occurred in the century before his birth. Hugo was born two years after Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor, and the Bourbon Monarchy was restored before his eighteenth birthday. Hugo's parents' contrasting political and religious views mirrored the forces that would fight for dominance in France throughout his life: Hugo's father was a high-ranking soldier in Napoleon's army, an atheist republican who regarded Napoleon as a hero, while his mother was a devout Catholic Royalist suspected of having General Victor Lahorie, who was beheaded in 1812 for plotting against Napoleon.


Sophie accompanied her husband to Italy, where he was governor of a province near Naples, and Spain, where he was in charge of three provinces. Sophie separated from Léopold in 1803 and relocated to Paris, tired of the continual travelling necessitated by military life and at odds with her adulterous spouse. She then took control of Victor's schooling and upbringing. Hugo's early poetry and fiction, as a result, reveal a strong commitment to both the king and Christianity. He would only begin to rebel against his Catholic Royalist schooling later, during the events leading up to France's 1848 Revolution, and instead embrace Republicanism and free thought.


Early Victor Hugo Books and Poetry

Hugo was strongly affected by François-René de Chateaubriand, the creator of Romanticism and France's preeminent literary personality in the early 1800s, as were many other young writers of his period. Hugo made the decision as a child to be "Chateaubriand or nothing," and his life would in many ways mirror that of his forefather. Hugo, like Chateaubriand, would promote Romanticism, become involved in politics as a Republicanist, and be pushed into exile as a result of his political views.


Hugo's early writing, with its precocious passion and eloquence, gained him success and fame at a young age. Hugo's first collection of poetry, Nouvelles Odes et Poesies Diverses, was published while he was only 22 years old in 1824 and earned him a royal annuity from Louis XVIII. Though the poems were praised for their spontaneity and fluency, Hugo's book Odes et Ballades, published two years later in 1826, demonstrated him to be a brilliant poet and natural master of lyric and creative song.


Against his mother's wishes, Victor fell in love and secretly married Adèle Foucher, his childhood sweetheart (1803-1868). He was unusually close to his mother, and it wasn't until she died in 1821 that he felt free to marry Adèle the next year. Han d'Islande (1823), his first novel, was published the following year, and Bug-Jargal, his second, three years later (1826). Between 1829 and 1840, he published five more collections of poetry: Les Orientales (1829), Les Feuilles d'automne (1831), Les Chants du crépuscule (1835), Les Voix intérieures (1837), and Les Rayons et les ombres (1840), solidifying his reputation as one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets of his time.


Theatrical Work

Hugo's theatre works did not have the same immediate success. In 1827, he released Cromwell, a never-staged verse drama that became famous for the author's introduction more than its own merits. The duration of the play was deemed "unfit for acting."


Marion de Lorme was Hugo's first play to be accepted for staging under his own name. The film was first forbidden by the censors because of its harsh representation of the French monarchy, but it was later allowed to screen uncensored in 1829, but it was a failure. Hugo's play Hernani, which he staged the next year, would go on to become one of the most successful and significant events in nineteenth-century French theatre.


Hugo followed Hernani's triumph with Le Roi s'amuse in 1832. (The King Takes His Amusement). Due to its overt ridicule of the French nobility, the play was quickly prohibited by the censors after only one performance, although it went on to become highly famous in print. Hugo was so enraged by the ban that he penned Lucréce Borgia (see: Lucrezia Borgia) in just fourteen days. It was then performed on stage in 1833, to great acclaim.


The debut of Hugo's Angelo took place in 1835, and it was a huge success. Soon after, the Duke of New Orleans, King Louis-brother Philippe's and a Hugo fan, established a new theatre to foster new plays. Ruy Blas was the first production at Théâtre de la Renaissance, which opened in November 1838. Despite being widely regarded as Hugo's best drama, it was only moderately successful at the time. Hugo's next play was not written until 1843. The Burgraves barely ran for 33 nights before being replaced with a competitive drama, and it was his final production for the stage.


Political Life and Exile

Hugo was ultimately elected to the Académie Francaise in 1841, after three unsuccessful attempts, consolidating his standing in the realm of French arts and letters. Following that, as a supporter of the republican form of government, he became increasingly involved in French politics. In 1841, King Louis-Philippe promoted him to the peerage, and he became a Pair de France in the Higher Chamber, where he spoke out against the death sentence and social injustice, as well as for press freedom and Polish self-government. Following the 1848 Revolution and the establishment of the Second Republic, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly and the Constitutional Assembly.


Hugo openly branded Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) a traitor to France when he took entire power in 1851 and established an anti-parliamentary constitution. He went to Brussels, then Jersey, before settling with his family in the Channel Island of Guernsey, where he would remain in exile until 1870.


Hugo's famous political pamphlets against Napoleon III, Napoléon le Petit and Histoire d'un crime, were published while he was in exile. Although the pamphlets were illegal in France, they had a significant impact there.


During his stay in Guernsey, he also wrote some of his best work, including Les Miserables and three critically acclaimed poetry collections, Les Châtiments (1853), Les Contemplations (1856), and La Légende des siècles (1859).


In 1859, Napoleon III offered all political exiles amnesty, but Hugo declined because it would mean he would have to tone down his critiques of the government. Hugo returned to his birthplace in 1870, after the unpopular Napoleon III was deposed and the Third Republic was created and was immediately elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.


Religious Views

Hugo became very anti-clerical and passionately rejected any connection to the church after being raised as a strict Roman Catholic by his mother. He insisted on being buried without a crucifix or priest when his sons Charles and François-Victor died, and he made the same request in his will for his own death and funeral.


Hugo moved from a non-practising Catholic to a Rationalist Deist, owing in large part to the church's apathy to the condition of the working class under the monarchy, which crushed their rebellion. Hugo replied, "No. A Freethinker," when asked if he was a Catholic by a census taker in 1872. While in exile, he grew fascinated with spiritualism and began attending séances.


Hugo's rationalism can be found in poems like Torquemada (1869), which is about religious fanaticism, The Pope (1878), which is violently anti-clerical, Religions and Religion (1880), which denies the utility of churches, and The End of Satan and God (1886) and (1891), both published posthumously, in which he depicts Christianity as a gryphon and rationalism as an angel. People will still believe in "God, Soul, and Responsibility," he prophesied, even if Christianity would finally fade away.


Declining Years and Death

Hugo was acclaimed as a national hero when he returned to Paris in 1870. He went on to survive the Siege of Paris, a slight stroke, his daughter Adèle's confinement to a mad asylum, and the deaths of his two sons all within a short period of time. Léopoldine, his second daughter, drowned in a boating accident in 1833, and his wife Adele died in 1868.


Juliette Drouet, his lifelong mistress, died in 1883, two years before he died. The death of Victor Hugo on May 22, 1885, at the age of 83, sparked widespread national grief. He was not only regarded as a towering figure in French literature, but also as a statesman who contributed to the preservation and shaping of France's Third Republic and democracy. His burial procession in Paris drew over two million people from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he was laid to rest.


Drawings

Hugo was almost as prolific an artist as he was a writer, generating almost 4,000 drawings throughout the course of his life. Hugo's art, which began as a casual pleasure, became more significant to him just before his exile, when he decided to cease writing in order to devote himself to politics. During the years 1848-1851, drawing became his exclusive creative expression.


Hugo only worked on paper, and on a tiny scale, with dark brown or black pen-and-ink washes, occasionally with white touches, and rarely with colour. The surviving sketches are shockingly skilled and modern in form and execution, foreshadowing surrealist and abstract expressionism's experimental tactics.

FAQs on Hillary Clinton Biography

1. What was Victor Hugo famous for?

Victor Hugo, a poet, novelist, and dramatist, is widely regarded as the most important of the French Romantic writers. Despite being acknowledged as one of France's greatest poets, he is best known outside of France for his novels Notre-Dame de Paris (1831; The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and Les Misérables (1862).

2. Why was Victor Hugo exiled?

When Napoleon III acquired complete control of France in 1851, however, he dissolved the country's democratic governance. Hugo called him a traitor to his country as a result of this. His comments made him unwelcome in his home country, and he was compelled to flee.