ABSTRACT
As with their philosophies of man, Victor Hugo's and Jean-Paul Sartre's approach to writing plays with the boundaries between creativity and rationality so as to suggest a dynamic sense of being. As writers, Hugo is usually celebrated as the poetic dreamer who reveres Shakespeare, whilst Sartre is reputed as the matter-of-fact thinker who is inspired by Heidegger. But in both cases, writing must commit to the ways in which human desire and objective reality elide and collide repeatedly. The novel's self-reflexivity therefore lends it the kind of hybrid quality that Hugo and Sartre associate with being, and which counteracts any attempt to limit human freedom. Concentrating more specifically on Hugo's ideas first, it is clear that, as a poet, Hugo believes that the writer should embellish his representation of the world with his own imaginative descriptions and impressions. To access this visionary stance, art would have to become something more than simply a mirror onto the world.
