Introduction

For many years, in nineteenth-century French studies, research and critical attention have been diverted from Hugo's poetry towards Baudelaire and Mallarmé, and his novels have not enjoyed the prestige of those of Stendhal, Balzac and Flaubert. Thanks in large measure to the publication of the Œuvres complètes (ed. Jacques Seebacher assisté de Guy Rosa, Laffont, 1985—90), there has been in recent years a renewal of interest in Hugo and particularly in his novels. Scholars have returned to this disregarded area of his work, impressed by the power and originality of Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Misérables, Les Travailleurs de la mer, Quatrevingt-Treize and L'Homme qui rit, and more especially by the diversity, the thematic and narrative singularity, the shifting ironies and resistance to interpretative closure of works once judged simplistic and based upon 'une sagesse abrégée'. The aim of this volume is to draw attention to the research currently being produced by scholars in French, British, Irish and American universities. The eleven essays, some in English, some in French, bring together various critical approaches, not in order to present a synthesis but to provide a point of departure, to stimulate interest and provoke discussion. It seemed essential that each of the major novels should be the subject of at least one study, and that there should also be essays of a more general scope. The contributors range from the most distinguished specialists with world-wide reputations to young scholars at the beginning of their careers who none the less have something challenging and original to say about this fascinating and hitherto neglected subject.