Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo


Book Description

While Victor Hugo's lasting appeal as a novelist can in large part be attributed to the unforgettable characters that he created, character has been paradoxically the most criticized and least understood element of his fiction. Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo provides readers with a deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances that characterize both Hugo's novel writing and the nineteenth-century French novel, and will thus appeal to the specialist and non-specialist alike.




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.




The Man Who Laughs


Book Description

Moving away from the explicitly political content of his previous novels, Victor Hugo turns to social commentary in The Man Who Laughs, an 1869 work that was made into a popular film in the 1920s. The plot deals with a band of miscreants who deliberately deform children to make them more effective beggars, as well as the long-lasting emotional and social damage that this abhorrent practice inflicts upon its victims.




Toilers of the Sea


Book Description




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.




Get to the Point!


Book Description

In this indispensable guide for anyone who must communicate in speech or writing, Schwartzberg shows that most of us fail to convince because we don't have a point-a concrete contention that we can argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. He lays out, step-by-step, how to develop one. In Joel's Schwartzberg's ten-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across-one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail-is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. A point is something more. It's a contention you can propose, argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. A point offers a position of potential value. Global warming is real is not a point. Scientific evidence shows that global warming is a real, human-generated problem that will have a devastating environmental and financial impact is a point. When we have a point, our influence snaps into place. We communicate belief, conviction, and urgency. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.




Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel


Book Description

Victor Brombert reassesses in a modern perspective the power and originality of Hugo's work, and provides a new interpretation of Hugo's narrative art as well as a synthesis of his poetic and moral vision. The twenty-eight drawings by Hugo reproduced in this book are further testimony to the visionary nature of Hugo's imagination.




The Invention of Hugo Cabret


Book Description

An orphan and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy train station. He desperately believes a broken automaton will make his dreams come true. But when his world collides with an eccentric girl and a bitter old man, Hugo's undercover life are put in jeopardy. Turn the pages, follow the illustrations and enter an unforgettable new world!




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.




Best of Victor Hugo


Book Description

This boxed set, with two novels by Victor Hugo, contains 'Les Miserables' read by Michael Jayston and 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' read by Andrew Sachs.