Approaches to Teaching Hugo's Les Misérables


Book Description

The greatest work of one of France's greatest writers, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables has captivated readers for a century and a half with its memorable characters, its indictment of injustice, its concern for those suffering in misery, and its unapologetic embrace of revolutionary ideals. The novel's length, multiple narratives, and encyclopedic digressiveness make it a pleasure to read but a challenge to teach, and this volume is designed to address the needs of instructors in a variety of courses that include the novel in excerpts or as a whole. Part 1 of the volume, "Materials," provides guidance on editions in French and in English translation, biographies, criticism, and maps. Part 2, "Approaches," contains essays that discuss the novel's conceptions of misère, sexuality, and the politics of the time and that demonstrate techniques for teaching context including the book's literary market, its adaptations, its place in popular culture, and its relation to other novels of its time.




Les Misérables


Book Description

The story begins in 1815 in Digne, as the peasant Jean Valjean, just released from 19 years' imprisonment in the Bagne of Toulon-five for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family and fourteen more for numerous escape attempts-is turned away by innkeepers because his yellow passport marks him as a former convict. He sleeps on the street, angry and bitter.Digne's benevolent Bishop Myriel gives him shelter. At night, Valjean runs off with Myriel's silverware. When the police capture Valjean, Myriel pretends that he has given the silverware to Valjean and presses him to take two silver candlesticks as well, as if he had forgotten to take them. The police accept his explanation and leave. Myriel tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God, and that he should use money from the silver candlesticks to make an honest man of himself.




Les Miserables


Book Description

The first new Penguin Classics translation in forty years of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, the subject of The Novel of the Century by David Bellos—published in a stunning Deluxe edition. Winner of the French-American Foundation & Florence Gould Foundation’s 29th Annual Translation Prize in Fiction. The subject of the world’s longest-running musical and the award-winning film, Les Misérables is a genuine literary treasure. Victor Hugo’s tale of injustice, heroism, and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him, and has been a perennial favorite since it first appeared over 150 years ago. This exciting new translation with Jillian Tamaki’s brilliant cover art will be a gift both to readers who have already fallen for its timeless story and to new readers discovering it for the first time. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.




The Mysteries of Paris


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Les Misérables


Book Description

From its informative chronology of Hugo's life and work and its excellent historical overview of Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic France, through its closing meditation on Hugo's vision of utopian society, Katherine M. Grossman's Les Miserables: Conversion, Revolution, Redemption is a model examination of a literary masterwork. At the heart of Grossman's close readings of several key sections of the novel is an interpretation of its protagonist, Jean Valjean, an Everyman embodying the hopes of oppressed people everywhere.




To Love Is to Act


Book Description

"To love is to act"-- "Aimer, c'est agir." These words, which Victor Hugo wrote three days before he died, epitomize his life's philosophy. His love of freedom, democracy, and all people--especially the poor and wretched--drove him not only to write his epic Les Misérables but also to follow his conscience. We have much to learn from Hugo, who battled for justice, lobbied against slavery and the death penalty, and fought for the rights of women and children. In a series of essays that interweave Hugo's life with Les Misérables and point to the novel's contemporary relevance, To Love Is to Act explores how Hugo reveals his guiding principles for life, including his belief in the redemptive power of love and forgiveness. Enriching the book are insights from artists who captured the novel's heart in the famed musical, Les Mis creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, producer of the musical Les Misérables Cameron Mackintosh, film director Tom Hooper, and award-winning actors who have portrayed Jean Valjean: Colm Wilkinson and Hugh Jackman.




Portrait Stories


Book Description

What makes stories about portraits so gripping and unsettling? Portrait Stories argues that it is the ways they problematize the relation between subjectivity and representation. Through close readings of short stories and novellas by Poe, James, Hoffmann, Gautier, Nerval, Balzac, Kleist, Hardy, Wilde, Storm, Sand, and Gogol, the author shows how the subjectivities of sitter, painter, and viewer are produced in relation to representations shaped by particular interests and power relations, often determined by gender as well as by class. She focuses on the power that can accrue to the painter from the act of representation (often at the expense of the portrait’s subject), while also exploring how and why this act may threaten the portrait painter’s sense of self. Analyzing the viewer’s relation to the portrait, she demonstrates how portrait stories problematize the very act of seeing and with it the way subjectivity is constructed in the field of vision.




Les Miserables; Volume 3


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Flaubert Writing


Book Description

The author's starting point for this study was the conviction that Flaubert's difficulty in sustaining a narrative, so evident in his early works, was not entirely overcome even in the works of his maturity. Flaubert seems to have a problem in generating his text and keeping it going. What is the difficulty in generating a text? How is it circumvented? And, most important, how does this problem and the strategies used to overcome it shape the narrative?




Les Miserables; Volume 4


Book Description

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.