Here's a lovely photo of the 19C Gothic revival effigies on the tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris that echoes through Claude's plight…

Pierre Abelard and his wife and pupil Héloïse, niece of Canon Fulbert…
( Read more... )

Re: Claude's injuries, I think there's an element of Hugo deliberately reflecting the macabre nature of late 15C religious art. The novel is deeply saturated in the art and architecture of its setting and nothing was more characteristic of the era (post-Black Death Western Europe) than the devotional cults of the Wounds of Christ and Corpus Christi ( Read more... )

It's interesting how authors can play with and recycle discarded plotlines. At one point, Hugo came up with a storyline where Claude bribes a prostitute to kill Phœbus, only the body she delivers to him in a sack turns out to be… Jehan.
He decided against this, but instead used a variant of it in his play Le Roi S'Amuse, in which the jester ( Read more... )

One or 2 small translation glitches that I have noted in several editions of NDdP:

1. Agnès Guybertaut/Esméralda's date of birth is clearly stated as the feast of Saint Paula (26 January). This is close enough to the feasts of St Agnes (21 and 28 January) to explain why she could still be named Agnès, as mediæval people were commonly named for saints ( Read more... )

The book on Visitations for the Archdeaconry of Josas for the late 15C is available. No wonder he prefers messing about in his laboratory or with his books... Admin is such a distraction from research... ;-D

(x-post from silverwhistle)

Phew, well it's been a loooong time since I last posted on this journal but I thought I'd post the link to my latest fanfic here for all my lovely fellow Frollophiles! There are nineteen chapters so far and the finish line, although still some-way off in the distance, is finally in sight! :D

Fandom: The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disney-based with ( Read more... )

Gaaaaaaaaaah, I never learned how to embed yt vids on lj so I can only give you the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zENnU89SP0g

Includes 14 versions of Frollo/Esmeralda - well, to be honest, I only counted the Frollos;) Song: Addicted by Kelly Clarkson.

On the User Info page, I've posted a brief outline of Claude's life before January 1482, as per the Hugo canon.