The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Summary | Chapterly
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo: A Complete Summary "He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him." Overview The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), originally titled Notre-Dame de Paris, is Victor Hugo's sweeping novel of medieval Paris, centered on the great cathedral and the lives that orbit around it. It is at once a love story, a social protest, a meditation on beauty and ugliness, and Hugo's passionate argument for the preservation of Gothic architecture. The novel weaves together the fates of Quasimodo, the deformed and deaf bell-ringer of Notre-Dame; Esmeralda, a beautiful Romani dancer; Claude Frollo, the cathedral's tormented archdeacon; and Phoebus, a shallow captain of the guard. Their intertwined stories explore what happens when obsession, power, and compassion collide in a society built on cruelty and superstition. Hugo wrote the novel partly to draw public attention to the neglected Gothic architecture of Paris, which was being demolished or left to decay. His campaign succeeded: the novel helped inspire the massive restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral that began in the 1840s. Plot Summary The Festival of Fools On the Feast of Fools in 1482, the people of Paris crown Quasimodo, the hideously deformed bell-ringer...