Notre-Dame de Paris (Oxford World's Classics)

re: Oxford Wold's Classics edition -This is not only a fabulous translation, but an unbelievably helpful edition. I thoroughly recommend the Kindle version - even as someone who typically prefers print. Unless you're really, really up on your French history, you're going to be running across historical references - people, places, customs - that are nonsensical to you. The print edition of this book has thorough endnotes, but they require you flip between your place in the book and the end where the notes live. In the Kindle version, you can tap the annotation, read it, and then tap back to the book uninterrupted. I've gotten into a great rhythm with these and it makes the book infinitely more accessible.As far as the book, I suppose I could give a review, but let's be honest - if you're here, it's because you know what you're buying. This book isn't in the "new authors" or "current best-sellers" shelves at Barnes & Noble, and you didn't pick it up by mistake. If you're a Disney fan, be warned that Hugo was trenchantly political and that the conventions of epic novel writing in the 1820s differ substantially from modern storytelling. If you're on board for that, read the forward, because Krailsheimer does a fabulous job explaining what this book is, how it's written, and how it might defy your expectations. While I think this is a great novel, a reader in 2017 can't dive headfirst into a novel from the 1820s and expect it to feel completely modern. The translation is perfectly lucid, but the plot structure and the way ideas are conveyed is very contrary to the way modern books are organized. Exposition - which is often frowned upon in modern novels - is an art form here, and Hugo spends the first half of the book setting up the pieces in exquisite detail. I love it, but again, if you're not prepared, you'll struggle to figure out where the book is going.Basically - enjoy, but also be sure you understand what you're reading. Coming from any adaptation in existence, even the more faithful ones, this book will be startling. Keep an open mind. It's a masterpiece, but you have to read it on its own terms.

Originally published in 1831, Notre-Dame de Paris forces modern readers to slow down.Often a 300 page novel is now considered a ponderous read, when it comes to literary fiction, but this book weighs in at 561 pages of densely packed thought and action.The book, like many 19th Century books, is as much a sociological event as it is a narrative. Often the story is interrupted for a history of a group, a building, or a concept. This may put modern readers off who are in a hurry to move on to their next read. Genre readers will be particularly put off by this book, which requires a level of commitment most are unwilling to make.However, if readers will still with the story and take the time to get to know Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, and the many other characters that make up the world of this Medieval Gothic Romance they will, hopefully, not be disappointed.Because it is Gothic, all actions, thoughts, and emotions are exaggerated and melodramatic. If you can accept the conventions of the Gothic Romance then you will enjoy this book as much as I have—this was my third reading of it. Firstly, I read it when I was in my late teens; then I read it at University; finally, I have read it again—thirty years on. During each reading I found something new to enjoy in the book.4 out of 5 stars. It lost one star because I have always found it to be a little over-written—even by the standards of the time.

Aside from the ‘story’ which is familiar to most even if it has not been read previously, readers will find introduction and footnotes illuminating.

I enjoyed this book because it was not what I expected. I had read Les Miserables and loved it, and was expecting something similar. I quickly saw that the comparison was of no value and began to enjoy this book on its own. I very much enjoy the way Hugo drifted from interaction between characters to his thoughts on architecture and Paris. For me, literature is most enjoyable when it wanders.

One of my least favorite classics I have read. It just seemed to meander....a LOT! The story just seemed to have no real protagonist, no real direction. And the writing did not bring this reader in. (although maybe that was the translation)I guess its worth a read but compared to other classics by Tolstoy, Dickens etc. this just didn't stand up!

In my childhood, Notr-Dame is my dream place due to Hugo’s novel. Great present to my friend to share this memory.

A classic work that I am glad I finally had the pleasure of reading. Darker than Les Miserables, but perhaps not as subtle in its plot development. Overall, out of the two works, I think I prefer Les Miserables, but Notre-Dame de Paris is worth reading more than once.

This earlier book isn't Hugo's most polished story, but it's got enough likeable characters and interesting developments to be well worth reading. And I loved the discussion on architecture and changing communication platforms in society!

As she dances for the crowds in the streets of Paris, the gypsy girl known as La Esmeralda incites passion in the breasts of two men, both forbidden to love in the common way: Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre-Dame, bound by vows of celibacy; and Quasimodo, the hideous creature who lives in the cathedral, condemned by his deformities to be an object of fear or pity, but never love. Esmeralda herself has formed a passion for another man, one unworthy of her love, but who will rouse the jealous fury of Frollo, setting off a chain of events that will ripple out well beyond these four central characters into the very history of Paris…I must admit that there were points in the first half of the book where I had a deep desire to hit Hugo over the head with a brick, in the hopes that it might inspire him to stop waffling about 15th century architecture and get on with telling the story. However, it is often these digressions that linger longest, and provide us with that glimpse into the thinking of past generations which makes reading classics such a pleasure. Even as I waited impatiently to get back to Esmeralda and her lovers, I enjoyed Hugo’s detailed descriptions of how Paris developed as a city, and how it evolved between 1482, when the book is set, and 1829-31, when it was written. I found his ideas about architecture being the way societies once recorded their histories and philosophies fascinating and, despite my lowly status as a lady reader, I was intrigued and at least partially convinced by his argument that the invention of the printing press, as a new and easier way to spread ideas, would remove this important function of architecture for later generations…"Our lady readers will forgive us if we stop for a moment to look for what thought might lie hidden behind the archdeacon’s enigmatic words: 'This will kill that, the book will kill the building.'”Hugo’s love for Paris is clear, though clear-eyed too. He rants about modern architects destroying the glories of the past (thank goodness he didn’t live to see the Louvre Pyramid or the Centre Pompidou, or the disastrous fire in Notre-Dame itself), and waxes sublimely on the city as a living entity with its people as its soul."Usually the murmur that comes from Paris in the daytime is the city speaking; at night it is the city breathing; here it is the city singing. Lend an ear then to this chorus from all the steeples, spread over the whole the murmur of half a million people, the everlasting plaint of the river, the infinite breathing of the wind, the deep and distant quartet of the four forests ranged over the hills on the horizon like immense organ cases, damp down as if in a half-tone everything too raucous and shrill in the central peal, and then say whether you know anything in the world more rich, joyful, golden, dazzling than this tumult of bells and chimes; this furnace of music; these ten thousand brazen voices singing at once in stone flutes three hundred feet high; this city transformed into an orchestra; this symphony of tempestuous sound."This seems a good point to lavish praise on the wonderful translation by Alban Krailsheimer, who also wrote the informative and interesting introduction and notes in my Oxford World’s Classics edition. He brings the prose to life, avoiding any of the clunkiness that sometimes makes translated literature such a chore, and gives full play to the humour and tragedy of the story, and to Hugo’s passion in his digressions. (He also reverts to the original French title, Notre-Dame de Paris - apparently The Hunchback of Notre Dame was an English invention.)In the second half, Hugo finally buckles down to the task of telling the story, not a moment too soon for this reader. And what a story! Although Krailsheimer informs us that Hugo’s initial remit was to follow Sir Walter Scott’s lead into the art of historical fiction, the book reminds me more of the style that Dickens would later adopt, of making his city and his society as much a feature of the book as his characters and their individual histories. Like Dickens he is also crying out for social change, specifically on the injustices of poverty and of the use of torture and capital punishment as methods of social control, keeping the powerful in power through fear. Writing while the reverberations of the French Revolution had yet to settle and when, therefore, the future form of government in France was still unclear, his open criticism of the monarchy and the ruling classes seems courageous. While the book is set several centuries before the Revolution, it is clearly his intent to show the vast social inequalities that led to it. Does the book have a hero? I’m not sure that it does at the individual level, but I felt that Hugo’s sympathies lay with his mob – not the Revolutionary mob of the 18th century, but their historical ancestors: the poor, the marginalised, the oppressed. He doesn’t sanitise them – they are shown as debauched and depraved, but within their own microcosm of society they act according to their own moral code, and provide mutual protection from the corrupt and brutal ruling class.Two things surprised me most. Firstly, there’s a lot of unexpected humour amid the serious stuff, with Pierre Gringoire (apparently a real person, though I’d never heard of him) as the main comic turn who provides moments of levity to lighten the generally dark tone. I loved the whole story of Gringoire and the goat! Secondly, the way in which Hugo portrays Frollo’s battle with lust and sexual matters generally is so much more open and explicit than I’m used to in English literature of roughly the same era. Lust is seen as the driving force for all the passion in the book – Quasimodo perhaps is the exception to this, his feelings for Esmeralda perhaps more truly love, although even he is no stranger to the stirrings of sexual desire. I found it interesting that Esmeralda too was shown as a passionate being with her own physical desires – how different to the insipid sexless heroines of so much English literature. And I felt Hugo handled all this superbly – the characters and their motivations all felt true to me (and made me wonder whether Dickens’ caricaturing was a way to get round the literary repressions enforced on English authors of the time. Darcy staring at Lizzie across drawing rooms and ballrooms is about as close to lust as I can think of in mainstream English Victorian literature, though perhaps the success of the sensation novels suggests that the English appetite for lust was secretly just as strong as the French).As always with these major classics, there’s far too much to discuss in a reasonable length blog post. In summary, then, after the long first half and the architectural longueurs in which he nearly lost me, Hugo won me over totally with the thrilling story and left me reeling at the end! And in the couple of weeks since I finished reading, I’ve found myself mulling over many of the issues he raised in his digressions, so that my appreciation of the whole book has continued to grow. It’s one I’d like to re-read, since knowing the outcome would lessen my impatience to get on with the story and allow me to savour all the rest in a more leisurely fashion. Heading for a paltry four stars at the halfway mark, by the wonderful end it had gained a well-deserved and brightly glowing five! (I’m even tempted now to read Les Misérables...)

This is, quite simply, the best English edition of one of my all-time favourite novels: a good translation, with excellent critical apparatus, attractively presented. (I spotted only one notable error – Agnès' birthday given as "St Paul's day" instead of "St Paula's day".) I'm only sorry that, unlike  the French paperback , it doesn't include any of the 19C illustrations. 'Notre Dame de Paris' was part of the vogue for historical fiction begun by Walter Scott – and in part, was written as a riposte to  Quentin Durward , which Hugo had reviewed. It was also inspired in part by anti-clerical Gothic novels such as Lewis's  The Monk , but is far more complex psychologically – proto-Dostoevskian at times, especially regarding its incomparable tragic hero. And no, that isn't Quasimodo (a supporting character only)... The common English re-titling (unauthorised, invented by Shoberl) is utterly misleading.I fell in love when I first read the novel in my mid-teens, c. 1980-81. I was the geeky girl who studied Latin, Greek and French, read Villon for fun, and was intent on studying mediæval history. He is the geeky boy who was always first into lectures and last to leave; who knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and studied in every Faculty of the University by 20; who had his own alchemical laboratory, and got excited talking about incunabula and theurgy. I'm now over 50, but Claude Frollo, the brilliant, doomed young Archdeacon of Josas, is still the greatest of my literary 'grandes passions': a magnificent, passionate, self-mutilating, cassock-ripping mess of intellectual genius, hopelessly bad social skills, and religious/sexual torment. I now realise that I recognised a fellow-Aspie/high-functioning autist, described in literature long before scientific recognition.The demands of compulsory celibacy, the innate difficulties of his condition/temperament, and the intellectual tensions between his traditional mediæval education and the new Renaissance learning that obsesses him – the revival of Neo-Platonism, theurgy and Hermeticism coming in from Italy, thanks to Marsilio Ficino & co – create a 'perfect storm' in Claude's inner life. Racked by conflict, he implodes, destroying all he loves and himself. The catalyst is a shallow, pretty dancing-girl. An Abelard who needs an Héloïse, all he finds is La Esméralda: not the incarnation of the Tabula Smaragdina, not a real emerald, but a cheap green glass bauble; not even a real gypsy. His trajectory is devastating, tearing down his whole world around him. It is impossible to read without wanting to barge in to the rescue, to knock heads together, to put things right.But, while Claude's terrifying, heart-wrenching tragedy is at the heart of the narrative, there is so much else to enjoy. The whole mediæval Parisian world is vividly realised, from the airy heights of the Cathedral to an anchoress's cell and the Villon-esque Court of Miracles, where the loveable poet and playwright Pierre Gringoire nearly comes to grief. It is a magnificent and moving book, also very funny in parts. Read it, visit Paris – Notre Dame, Musée de Cluny, Quartier Latin – then read it again. the French paperbackQuentin DurwardThe Monk

A remarkably easy read due to the excellent translation. highly recommend.

One of my fav books when I was growing upIt never fails to disappoint and brought me to tears even now as a 23yoThe quality was amazing and the size is perfect to carry on the train

Bought this book as a present for my son. He read it through in approx two weeks, never left his hands so must be good