Bradley Stephens | University of Bristol (original) (raw)
Books by Bradley Stephens
Exploring the enduring popularity of Victor Hugo’s 'Les Misérables', this edited volume offers an... more Exploring the enduring popularity of Victor Hugo’s 'Les Misérables', this edited volume offers analysis of both the novel itself and its adaptations. In spite of a mixed response from critics, 'Les Misérables' instantly became a global bestseller. Since its successful publication over 150 years ago, it has traveled across different countries, cultures, and media, giving rise to more than 60 international film and television variations, numerous radio dramatizations, animated versions, comics, and stage plays. Most famously, it has inspired the world's longest running musical, which itself has generated a wealth of fan-made and online content. Whatever its form, Hugo’s tale of social injustice and personal redemption continues to permeate the popular imagination. This volume draws together essays from across a variety of fields, combining readings of 'Les Misérables' with reflections on some of its multimedia afterlives, including musical theater and film from the silent period to today's digital platforms. The contributors offer new insights into the development and reception of Hugo's celebrated classic, deepening our understanding of the novel as a work that unites social commentary with artistic vision and raising important questions about the cultural practice of adaptation.
The arch-Romantic Victor Hugo (1802-85) and the Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905... more The arch-Romantic Victor Hugo (1802-85) and the Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) are widely perceived to have little in common beyond their canonical status. However, responding to Sartre’s often overlooked fascination with Hugo, this book cuts through generic divisions to argue that significant parallels between the two writers have been neglected. Bradley Stephens reveals how both Hugo and Sartre engage with human being in distinctly non-ontological terms, thereby anticipating postmodernist approaches to human experience. From different origins but towards similar realizations, they expose the indeterminate human condition as at once release and restriction. These writers insist that liberty is not simply a political ideal, but an existential condition which engages human endeavour as a dynamic rather than definitive mode of being. The Liability of Liberty affirms the ongoing relevance of the two most iconic French writers of the modern period to contemporary discourse on what it means to be free.
This co-edited volume identifies French cultural as well as theoretical approaches to the concept... more This co-edited volume identifies French cultural as well as theoretical approaches to the concept of 'transmission' which will be explored in this book in relation to key intellectual figures, including Proust, Barthes, and Derrida. In the increasingly mediatised spaces of France and the Francophone world, which strides towards the future as much as reflecting on their past, transmission can be thought of as a movement across both space and time, whether in the almost instant transmission of a broadcast or webcast, or in the long-term transhistorical transmission of cultural heritage, or preference or prejudice.
Chapters in Books by Bradley Stephens
How and why did the French Romantics turn to narrative fiction as a means of engaging with their ... more How and why did the French Romantics turn to narrative fiction as a means of engaging with their generation's ever-shifting history? This chapter looks at three of France's most iconic writers -- whose work has too often been connected in biographical rather than critical terms -- to stress the interaction between Romantic imagination and Realist observation that enabled the novel to become the dominant literary genre of the nineteenth century. Hugo, Balzac, and Dumas bring new depths to the novel form in their recognition of its capacity for pensive sobriety and social commentary, while at the same time celebrating its aptitude for the fizz and froth of popular spectacle.
In the 'Préface de Cromwell' (1827), Victor Hugo argued that opposites feed into one another in a... more In the 'Préface de Cromwell' (1827), Victor Hugo argued that opposites feed into one another in art as in life, dispersing and destabilizing the boundaries between categories without disintegrating them. Ugliness could be beautiful, and vice-versa, since nothing is absolute in a universe of endless creation. This dissolution of fixed identity positions into a more transient and boundless notion of being was vital to Hugo’s notion of infinite creativity as the hallmark of an ultimately free human condition. These Romantic dialectics of being anticipate the ethical turn in twentieth-century philosophy that we now identify with Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas refigured totality as infinity so as to think ‘autrement qu’être’, thereby moving western thinking away from ontological notions of categorical being towards the idea of alterity and Otherness. This move is necessarily incomplete (for the Other can never be reduced to the Same), but it must be initiated if self-interest is to be opened up to altruism. Such an embrace of changeability as an inexorable but inestimable reality of existence is animated through Hugo’s endless decentring and realignment of subject positions in an œuvre that he likens to an ocean of shifting surfaces and immeasurable depths. In this chapter, I investigate these mostly ignored parallels by exploring one of Hugo’s most philosophically charged poems, ‘La Force des choses’ (1853). Such a reading serves a dual imperative: firstly, to chart the interplay that Hugo insists upon as a poète-philosophe between poetic imagination and philosophical reason in all human endeavours, and which Levinas’s own ethics imply; and secondly, by extension, to challenge Levinas’s Platonic hostility to poetry as an exceedingly lyrical and subject-centred medium, so as to emphasize poetry’s ability to think in terms 'otherwise than being', resisting ontological category.
'I Heart Huckabees' (2004), directed and co-written by David O. Russell, wants to engage its audi... more 'I Heart Huckabees' (2004), directed and co-written by David O. Russell, wants to engage its audience with the dilemmas of contingent being that Beauvoir herself explored over half a century earlier in her essay 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' (1947). The film's reflections on the isolating and bewildering effects of modern living mirror Beauvoir's own insights into how we are alone in the world and exist without guarantees. A comparative reading of Russell's film and Beauvoir's essay reminds us of the ongoing relevance of Beauvoir's ethical thinking towards how we relate to ourselves and to our world. Both the film and Beauvoir embrace ambiguity so as to disassemble supposedly unchanging and self-evident ways of being in favor of a more dynamic existence. For Beauvoir, such an embrace is an inherent aspect of human consciousness.
In this new introduction by Bradley Stephens (literary scholar at the University of Bristol), the... more In this new introduction by Bradley Stephens (literary scholar at the University of Bristol), the ongoing modern relevance of Hugo's classic gothic novel is explored in terms of its cinematic and political elements. This introduction forms part of a striking new package for Walter J. Cobb's translation, with an afterword by Graham Robb, leading scholar of 19th-century French literature.
This essay explores how Hugo's private correspondence with his long-term mistress Juliette Drouet... more This essay explores how Hugo's private correspondence with his long-term mistress Juliette Drouet might help us to complicate the stereotypes that continue to cling to the supposedly 'great' French man of letters.
Journal Articles by Bradley Stephens
Dix Neuf, 2014
This article discusses how cartoon adaptations that re-imagine characters as animals might be fra... more This article discusses how cartoon adaptations that re-imagine characters as animals might be framed within recent critical discourse in animation studies and animal studies. It explores one of the more unique versions of Alexandre Dumas père’s 'Les Trois mousquetaires', a popular 1980s animated cartoon series entitled 'Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds', in which the majority of the characters are anthropomorphizations of dogs. The Dogtanian series indicates the creative possibilities afforded to adapters by anthropomorphized cartoon animals, not least as a means of suggesting naturalized human behaviours. Because animal instinct and heroic manhood align in Dumas’s novel, Dogtanian and his fellow characters provide an ideal ensemble in which to dramatise Dumas’s historical romance. Such an alignment in both the novel and this adaptation highlights natural impulse as an ongoing but certainly not unproblematic source of Dumas’s appeal.
Dix Neuf, 2014
In this introduction to this special number of 'Dix-Neuf', we outline the significance of ninetee... more In this introduction to this special number of 'Dix-Neuf', we outline the significance of nineteenth-century French literature to both the industry and study of multimedia adaptation. In particular, we draw on key concepts and methodologies from the fields of adaptation studies, reception theory, and translation studies to trace and explore the ways in which writing from this period both concerns itself with questions of artistic adaptation and finds itself reimagined in new forms across a variety of media, era, and cultures.
Ce numéro propose une réflexion sur ce qui fait aujourd'hui la singularité de l'œuvre de Victor H... more Ce numéro propose une réflexion sur ce qui fait aujourd'hui la singularité de l'œuvre de Victor Hugo (philosophie, politique, théâtre, roman, esthétique...). Les auteurs se sont attachés ici à jeter un nouvel éclairage sur l'œuvre hugolienne, en tenant compte de la fascination extraordinaire que celle-ci exerce encore sur ses lecteurs. Ils examinent autant le contenu de l’œuvre que la forme qui en rend possible la production, cette singulière façon d’écrire, afin de mieux faire apparaître la force propre de la pensée de l’écrivain. Il s’agit de répondre à cette question ambitieuse : qu’est-ce qui fait la singularité de Victor Hugo et comment se manifeste-t-elle ? ou : comment (re)lire Hugo aujourd’hui ? C’est-à-dire : sans le simplifier ni l’étouffer, en lui rendant sa liberté de pensée et de parole. Voici l’occasion de reprendre ainsi l’image du kaléidoscope chère à Hugo et de revisiter l’œuvre sous différents angles, lui rendant ses couleurs, en en faisant surgir le tranchant de la pensée, les résonnances politiques, la musique des mots, les interrogations philosophiques, la question du nom, l’éclat de la langue
![Research paper thumbnail of ÉTAT PRÉSENT: Victor Hugo ('French Studies' 63: 1 [2009]: 66-74)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/47921122/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](An overview of scholarship and research trajectories related to the life and works of Victor Hugo... more An overview of scholarship and research trajectories related to the life and works of Victor Hugo, reflecting on past trends in Hugo studies and identifying potential future directions.
The polarities of the Cold War impelled many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to take ... more The polarities of the Cold War impelled many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to take sides either with capitalism or communism. Both Jean-Paul Sartre and John Steinbeck famously attempted to respond to this ideological choice and would differ in their political leanings: Sartre was an outspoken critic of American capitalist hegemony, whereas Steinbeck became an avid opponent of the communist bloc. They nonetheless shared a dedication to engaging with the social issues of their time, becoming arguably the pre-eminent proletarian writers of the period and eventual Nobel Prize winners. Sartre believed Steinbeck to be `the most rebellious, perhaps' of American writers, whilst Steinbeck so admired the French intellectual scene typified by Sartre that he spent nearly a year in Paris writing for Le Figaro. Their pivotal promotion of individual freedom may have nudged them towards both ends of the political spectrum respectively; yet their emphasis on the changeability of human existence constantly destabilized any position they approached. In this article I argue for a productive return to their writing in order to underline the alternations both encounter when seeking to put the libertarian ideal of individuality into practice. In their novels L'Âge de raison (1945) and East of Eden (1952), as well as in their journals, we can observe how their mutual emphasis on man's indeterminism as an autonomous subject inevitably dissolves the foundation of any normative political ethos. As such, it is crucial to reiterate that their engagement with the post-war period in fact deeply complicates the drive for totalization and systemization implied in the strict allegiances of the Cold War political terrain.
As the patriarch of French Romanticism, Victor Hugo is often associated with the primacy of the i... more As the patriarch of French Romanticism, Victor Hugo is often associated with the primacy of the imagination, exhibiting a poetic creativity that seems to share little in common with the rigors of philosophical logic. However, in 'Victor Hugo, le philosophe' (1900), Charles Renouvier argued that Hugo was perhaps the French philosopher of the nineteenth century precisely because he brought the romantic and the rational to bear upon one another. Suspicious of how philosophy had become institutionalized in academic circles, Renouvier was the most prolific philosophical writer of his generation in France, whose work influenced both William James and Julien Benda. He praised Hugo as a thinker of contrast who had refused to fix his ideas within a single conceptualizing framework. As a man of his times, Hugo identified and tapped into the major pulses of nineteenth-century thinking, including positivism and pessimism. But his inventive vision as a poet helped him look beyond such philosophical strictures, giving him both breadth of understanding and depth of insight as the poet-philosopher. This article highlights that both men indeed conceive of poetry and philosophy as necessarily in dialogue rather than mutually exclusive. Their focus is on an interdisciplinary practice rather than an institutional one, challenging the closed outlooks of both ‘l’art pour l’art’ and strictly practical reason to empower a much wider perspective. Crucially, I highlight how both thinkers emphasize contestation, not resolution. They keep in play the dynamic of poetic intuition and philosophical sense that they see as pivotal to man’s thinking about his world. In so doing, I foreground their relevance to current debates on the identity of the French thinker in a ‘post-theory’ world that is reclaiming philosophy as a creative rather than solely critical discourse.
![Research paper thumbnail of READING WALTER BENJAMIN'S CONCEPT OF THE RUIN IN VICTOR HUGO'S NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS ('French Studies' 61: 2 [2006]: 155-77)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/47921031/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Walter Benjamin's readings of modernity are repeatedly strained by the tension he identifies betw... more Walter Benjamin's readings of modernity are repeatedly strained by the tension he identifies between demystification and the drive towards the mythic. How are we to awaken from 'ideological dream-states' and engage with an indeterminate reality without positing the unity of an integrated whole to begin with? I suggest that Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris yields a compelling perspective on this dilemma. Hugo never denies the lure of myths in his novel, simply their possibility, recognis-ing that they remain as irresistible as they are incredible. He energises the opposition between artifice and actuality, proposing that man can only oscillate between both the ideal and the real, even though he cannot overcome their incompatibility. This dynamic is observed upon Notre-Dame herself. Her hybrid edifice bears the mark of bygone values, yet as such stands as a monument to the transformative sweep of time. In turn, Hugo teases yet simultaneously refuses any absolute narrative viewpoint, stressing both the limitations of language and his own sub-jectivity. What makes this reading less an exercise of intellectual indulgence than a matter of critical urgency is Benjamin's widely overlooked attraction towards Hugo as a modernist writer. Indeed, the novel deploys two key tools of Benjamin's thinking: allegory, to expose meaning as arbitrary, and the ruin, which preserves the image of a history that is no more. I explore Hugo's representation of both novel and cathedral as realms of contrast, not integration, so as to make a productive return to the dilemmas Benjamin encounters.
Media & Blogs by Bradley Stephens
As one of the nineteenth century's most globally recognised figures, Victor Hugo increasingly use... more As one of the nineteenth century's most globally recognised figures, Victor Hugo increasingly used his literary and political celebrity throughout his long career to lobby for what he famously called a future 'United States of Europe', but what did this federation look like and how did this dream withstand the crises of the nineteenth century?
Panellists: William Nicholson, screenwriter of Les Misérables (also Shadowlands, Gladiator) and a... more Panellists:
William Nicholson, screenwriter of Les Misérables (also Shadowlands, Gladiator) and award-winning novelist and playwright.
Hadley Fraser, West End performer, starred in the musical Les Misérables (Javert, Marius, Grantaire) and appeared in the film.
Bradley Stephens, University of Bristol, author and UK specialist on Hugo and adaptations of his work.
Moderator:
Dave Calhoun, film editor, Time Out
Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables has inspired numerous screen and stage adaptations since its publication over one hundred and fifty years ago, including the world’s longest-running musical and, most recently, Tom Hooper’s new film. The thrilling story of love, sacrifice and redemption with its unforgettable characters continues to capture the imaginations of readers and viewers alike. What accounts for the enduring popularity and appeal of Victor Hugo’s novel? This event brings together a varied panel of guest speakers, each with a different perspective, for a lively and entertaining discussion on the film and its adaptation from novel to stage to screen. Expect fascinating insights into how Hugo’s story and characters are interpreted for contemporary audiences and learn more about the man behind the novel.
This event was presented by the Society of Friends of Victor Hugo in conjunction with Ciné Lumière, and was part of the international ‘Victor Hugo et Égaux’ Festival 2013.
150 years after its original publication, and on the eve of a new film version of the famous stag... more 150 years after its original publication, and on the eve of a new film version of the famous stage musical, how does Victor Hugo's landmark novel continue to be relevant, and what were its origins?
You will have probably "heard the people sing" in the stage musical 'Les Misérables', but do you ... more You will have probably "heard the people sing" in the stage musical 'Les Misérables', but do you know the man behind the much loved story? Victor Hugo was a global superstar in his day and remains revered by the French as a national hero. In this talk (delivered on 28th July 2010 at the Watershed Media Centre), Bradley Stephens will discuss Hugo's extraordinary life, from his leadership of French Romanticism, through his political exile in the Channel Islands, to his unprecedented State funeral in Paris, and explain why works such as Les Misérables continue to fascinate us 125 years after Hugo’s death.
Reviews by Bradley Stephens
Exploring the enduring popularity of Victor Hugo’s 'Les Misérables', this edited volume offers an... more Exploring the enduring popularity of Victor Hugo’s 'Les Misérables', this edited volume offers analysis of both the novel itself and its adaptations. In spite of a mixed response from critics, 'Les Misérables' instantly became a global bestseller. Since its successful publication over 150 years ago, it has traveled across different countries, cultures, and media, giving rise to more than 60 international film and television variations, numerous radio dramatizations, animated versions, comics, and stage plays. Most famously, it has inspired the world's longest running musical, which itself has generated a wealth of fan-made and online content. Whatever its form, Hugo’s tale of social injustice and personal redemption continues to permeate the popular imagination. This volume draws together essays from across a variety of fields, combining readings of 'Les Misérables' with reflections on some of its multimedia afterlives, including musical theater and film from the silent period to today's digital platforms. The contributors offer new insights into the development and reception of Hugo's celebrated classic, deepening our understanding of the novel as a work that unites social commentary with artistic vision and raising important questions about the cultural practice of adaptation.
The arch-Romantic Victor Hugo (1802-85) and the Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905... more The arch-Romantic Victor Hugo (1802-85) and the Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) are widely perceived to have little in common beyond their canonical status. However, responding to Sartre’s often overlooked fascination with Hugo, this book cuts through generic divisions to argue that significant parallels between the two writers have been neglected. Bradley Stephens reveals how both Hugo and Sartre engage with human being in distinctly non-ontological terms, thereby anticipating postmodernist approaches to human experience. From different origins but towards similar realizations, they expose the indeterminate human condition as at once release and restriction. These writers insist that liberty is not simply a political ideal, but an existential condition which engages human endeavour as a dynamic rather than definitive mode of being. The Liability of Liberty affirms the ongoing relevance of the two most iconic French writers of the modern period to contemporary discourse on what it means to be free.
This co-edited volume identifies French cultural as well as theoretical approaches to the concept... more This co-edited volume identifies French cultural as well as theoretical approaches to the concept of 'transmission' which will be explored in this book in relation to key intellectual figures, including Proust, Barthes, and Derrida. In the increasingly mediatised spaces of France and the Francophone world, which strides towards the future as much as reflecting on their past, transmission can be thought of as a movement across both space and time, whether in the almost instant transmission of a broadcast or webcast, or in the long-term transhistorical transmission of cultural heritage, or preference or prejudice.
How and why did the French Romantics turn to narrative fiction as a means of engaging with their ... more How and why did the French Romantics turn to narrative fiction as a means of engaging with their generation's ever-shifting history? This chapter looks at three of France's most iconic writers -- whose work has too often been connected in biographical rather than critical terms -- to stress the interaction between Romantic imagination and Realist observation that enabled the novel to become the dominant literary genre of the nineteenth century. Hugo, Balzac, and Dumas bring new depths to the novel form in their recognition of its capacity for pensive sobriety and social commentary, while at the same time celebrating its aptitude for the fizz and froth of popular spectacle.
In the 'Préface de Cromwell' (1827), Victor Hugo argued that opposites feed into one another in a... more In the 'Préface de Cromwell' (1827), Victor Hugo argued that opposites feed into one another in art as in life, dispersing and destabilizing the boundaries between categories without disintegrating them. Ugliness could be beautiful, and vice-versa, since nothing is absolute in a universe of endless creation. This dissolution of fixed identity positions into a more transient and boundless notion of being was vital to Hugo’s notion of infinite creativity as the hallmark of an ultimately free human condition. These Romantic dialectics of being anticipate the ethical turn in twentieth-century philosophy that we now identify with Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas refigured totality as infinity so as to think ‘autrement qu’être’, thereby moving western thinking away from ontological notions of categorical being towards the idea of alterity and Otherness. This move is necessarily incomplete (for the Other can never be reduced to the Same), but it must be initiated if self-interest is to be opened up to altruism. Such an embrace of changeability as an inexorable but inestimable reality of existence is animated through Hugo’s endless decentring and realignment of subject positions in an œuvre that he likens to an ocean of shifting surfaces and immeasurable depths. In this chapter, I investigate these mostly ignored parallels by exploring one of Hugo’s most philosophically charged poems, ‘La Force des choses’ (1853). Such a reading serves a dual imperative: firstly, to chart the interplay that Hugo insists upon as a poète-philosophe between poetic imagination and philosophical reason in all human endeavours, and which Levinas’s own ethics imply; and secondly, by extension, to challenge Levinas’s Platonic hostility to poetry as an exceedingly lyrical and subject-centred medium, so as to emphasize poetry’s ability to think in terms 'otherwise than being', resisting ontological category.
'I Heart Huckabees' (2004), directed and co-written by David O. Russell, wants to engage its audi... more 'I Heart Huckabees' (2004), directed and co-written by David O. Russell, wants to engage its audience with the dilemmas of contingent being that Beauvoir herself explored over half a century earlier in her essay 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' (1947). The film's reflections on the isolating and bewildering effects of modern living mirror Beauvoir's own insights into how we are alone in the world and exist without guarantees. A comparative reading of Russell's film and Beauvoir's essay reminds us of the ongoing relevance of Beauvoir's ethical thinking towards how we relate to ourselves and to our world. Both the film and Beauvoir embrace ambiguity so as to disassemble supposedly unchanging and self-evident ways of being in favor of a more dynamic existence. For Beauvoir, such an embrace is an inherent aspect of human consciousness.
In this new introduction by Bradley Stephens (literary scholar at the University of Bristol), the... more In this new introduction by Bradley Stephens (literary scholar at the University of Bristol), the ongoing modern relevance of Hugo's classic gothic novel is explored in terms of its cinematic and political elements. This introduction forms part of a striking new package for Walter J. Cobb's translation, with an afterword by Graham Robb, leading scholar of 19th-century French literature.
This essay explores how Hugo's private correspondence with his long-term mistress Juliette Drouet... more This essay explores how Hugo's private correspondence with his long-term mistress Juliette Drouet might help us to complicate the stereotypes that continue to cling to the supposedly 'great' French man of letters.
Dix Neuf, 2014
This article discusses how cartoon adaptations that re-imagine characters as animals might be fra... more This article discusses how cartoon adaptations that re-imagine characters as animals might be framed within recent critical discourse in animation studies and animal studies. It explores one of the more unique versions of Alexandre Dumas père’s 'Les Trois mousquetaires', a popular 1980s animated cartoon series entitled 'Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds', in which the majority of the characters are anthropomorphizations of dogs. The Dogtanian series indicates the creative possibilities afforded to adapters by anthropomorphized cartoon animals, not least as a means of suggesting naturalized human behaviours. Because animal instinct and heroic manhood align in Dumas’s novel, Dogtanian and his fellow characters provide an ideal ensemble in which to dramatise Dumas’s historical romance. Such an alignment in both the novel and this adaptation highlights natural impulse as an ongoing but certainly not unproblematic source of Dumas’s appeal.
Dix Neuf, 2014
In this introduction to this special number of 'Dix-Neuf', we outline the significance of ninetee... more In this introduction to this special number of 'Dix-Neuf', we outline the significance of nineteenth-century French literature to both the industry and study of multimedia adaptation. In particular, we draw on key concepts and methodologies from the fields of adaptation studies, reception theory, and translation studies to trace and explore the ways in which writing from this period both concerns itself with questions of artistic adaptation and finds itself reimagined in new forms across a variety of media, era, and cultures.
Ce numéro propose une réflexion sur ce qui fait aujourd'hui la singularité de l'œuvre de Victor H... more Ce numéro propose une réflexion sur ce qui fait aujourd'hui la singularité de l'œuvre de Victor Hugo (philosophie, politique, théâtre, roman, esthétique...). Les auteurs se sont attachés ici à jeter un nouvel éclairage sur l'œuvre hugolienne, en tenant compte de la fascination extraordinaire que celle-ci exerce encore sur ses lecteurs. Ils examinent autant le contenu de l’œuvre que la forme qui en rend possible la production, cette singulière façon d’écrire, afin de mieux faire apparaître la force propre de la pensée de l’écrivain. Il s’agit de répondre à cette question ambitieuse : qu’est-ce qui fait la singularité de Victor Hugo et comment se manifeste-t-elle ? ou : comment (re)lire Hugo aujourd’hui ? C’est-à-dire : sans le simplifier ni l’étouffer, en lui rendant sa liberté de pensée et de parole. Voici l’occasion de reprendre ainsi l’image du kaléidoscope chère à Hugo et de revisiter l’œuvre sous différents angles, lui rendant ses couleurs, en en faisant surgir le tranchant de la pensée, les résonnances politiques, la musique des mots, les interrogations philosophiques, la question du nom, l’éclat de la langue
An overview of scholarship and research trajectories related to the life and works of Victor Hugo... more An overview of scholarship and research trajectories related to the life and works of Victor Hugo, reflecting on past trends in Hugo studies and identifying potential future directions.
The polarities of the Cold War impelled many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to take ... more The polarities of the Cold War impelled many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to take sides either with capitalism or communism. Both Jean-Paul Sartre and John Steinbeck famously attempted to respond to this ideological choice and would differ in their political leanings: Sartre was an outspoken critic of American capitalist hegemony, whereas Steinbeck became an avid opponent of the communist bloc. They nonetheless shared a dedication to engaging with the social issues of their time, becoming arguably the pre-eminent proletarian writers of the period and eventual Nobel Prize winners. Sartre believed Steinbeck to be `the most rebellious, perhaps' of American writers, whilst Steinbeck so admired the French intellectual scene typified by Sartre that he spent nearly a year in Paris writing for Le Figaro. Their pivotal promotion of individual freedom may have nudged them towards both ends of the political spectrum respectively; yet their emphasis on the changeability of human existence constantly destabilized any position they approached. In this article I argue for a productive return to their writing in order to underline the alternations both encounter when seeking to put the libertarian ideal of individuality into practice. In their novels L'Âge de raison (1945) and East of Eden (1952), as well as in their journals, we can observe how their mutual emphasis on man's indeterminism as an autonomous subject inevitably dissolves the foundation of any normative political ethos. As such, it is crucial to reiterate that their engagement with the post-war period in fact deeply complicates the drive for totalization and systemization implied in the strict allegiances of the Cold War political terrain.
As the patriarch of French Romanticism, Victor Hugo is often associated with the primacy of the i... more As the patriarch of French Romanticism, Victor Hugo is often associated with the primacy of the imagination, exhibiting a poetic creativity that seems to share little in common with the rigors of philosophical logic. However, in 'Victor Hugo, le philosophe' (1900), Charles Renouvier argued that Hugo was perhaps the French philosopher of the nineteenth century precisely because he brought the romantic and the rational to bear upon one another. Suspicious of how philosophy had become institutionalized in academic circles, Renouvier was the most prolific philosophical writer of his generation in France, whose work influenced both William James and Julien Benda. He praised Hugo as a thinker of contrast who had refused to fix his ideas within a single conceptualizing framework. As a man of his times, Hugo identified and tapped into the major pulses of nineteenth-century thinking, including positivism and pessimism. But his inventive vision as a poet helped him look beyond such philosophical strictures, giving him both breadth of understanding and depth of insight as the poet-philosopher. This article highlights that both men indeed conceive of poetry and philosophy as necessarily in dialogue rather than mutually exclusive. Their focus is on an interdisciplinary practice rather than an institutional one, challenging the closed outlooks of both ‘l’art pour l’art’ and strictly practical reason to empower a much wider perspective. Crucially, I highlight how both thinkers emphasize contestation, not resolution. They keep in play the dynamic of poetic intuition and philosophical sense that they see as pivotal to man’s thinking about his world. In so doing, I foreground their relevance to current debates on the identity of the French thinker in a ‘post-theory’ world that is reclaiming philosophy as a creative rather than solely critical discourse.
Walter Benjamin's readings of modernity are repeatedly strained by the tension he identifies betw... more Walter Benjamin's readings of modernity are repeatedly strained by the tension he identifies between demystification and the drive towards the mythic. How are we to awaken from 'ideological dream-states' and engage with an indeterminate reality without positing the unity of an integrated whole to begin with? I suggest that Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris yields a compelling perspective on this dilemma. Hugo never denies the lure of myths in his novel, simply their possibility, recognis-ing that they remain as irresistible as they are incredible. He energises the opposition between artifice and actuality, proposing that man can only oscillate between both the ideal and the real, even though he cannot overcome their incompatibility. This dynamic is observed upon Notre-Dame herself. Her hybrid edifice bears the mark of bygone values, yet as such stands as a monument to the transformative sweep of time. In turn, Hugo teases yet simultaneously refuses any absolute narrative viewpoint, stressing both the limitations of language and his own sub-jectivity. What makes this reading less an exercise of intellectual indulgence than a matter of critical urgency is Benjamin's widely overlooked attraction towards Hugo as a modernist writer. Indeed, the novel deploys two key tools of Benjamin's thinking: allegory, to expose meaning as arbitrary, and the ruin, which preserves the image of a history that is no more. I explore Hugo's representation of both novel and cathedral as realms of contrast, not integration, so as to make a productive return to the dilemmas Benjamin encounters.
As one of the nineteenth century's most globally recognised figures, Victor Hugo increasingly use... more As one of the nineteenth century's most globally recognised figures, Victor Hugo increasingly used his literary and political celebrity throughout his long career to lobby for what he famously called a future 'United States of Europe', but what did this federation look like and how did this dream withstand the crises of the nineteenth century?
Panellists: William Nicholson, screenwriter of Les Misérables (also Shadowlands, Gladiator) and a... more Panellists:
William Nicholson, screenwriter of Les Misérables (also Shadowlands, Gladiator) and award-winning novelist and playwright.
Hadley Fraser, West End performer, starred in the musical Les Misérables (Javert, Marius, Grantaire) and appeared in the film.
Bradley Stephens, University of Bristol, author and UK specialist on Hugo and adaptations of his work.
Moderator:
Dave Calhoun, film editor, Time Out
Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables has inspired numerous screen and stage adaptations since its publication over one hundred and fifty years ago, including the world’s longest-running musical and, most recently, Tom Hooper’s new film. The thrilling story of love, sacrifice and redemption with its unforgettable characters continues to capture the imaginations of readers and viewers alike. What accounts for the enduring popularity and appeal of Victor Hugo’s novel? This event brings together a varied panel of guest speakers, each with a different perspective, for a lively and entertaining discussion on the film and its adaptation from novel to stage to screen. Expect fascinating insights into how Hugo’s story and characters are interpreted for contemporary audiences and learn more about the man behind the novel.
This event was presented by the Society of Friends of Victor Hugo in conjunction with Ciné Lumière, and was part of the international ‘Victor Hugo et Égaux’ Festival 2013.
150 years after its original publication, and on the eve of a new film version of the famous stag... more 150 years after its original publication, and on the eve of a new film version of the famous stage musical, how does Victor Hugo's landmark novel continue to be relevant, and what were its origins?
You will have probably "heard the people sing" in the stage musical 'Les Misérables', but do you ... more You will have probably "heard the people sing" in the stage musical 'Les Misérables', but do you know the man behind the much loved story? Victor Hugo was a global superstar in his day and remains revered by the French as a national hero. In this talk (delivered on 28th July 2010 at the Watershed Media Centre), Bradley Stephens will discuss Hugo's extraordinary life, from his leadership of French Romanticism, through his political exile in the Channel Islands, to his unprecedented State funeral in Paris, and explain why works such as Les Misérables continue to fascinate us 125 years after Hugo’s death.
Modern Language Review, 2010
Modern and Contemporary France, 2009
French Studies, 2010
Marva Barnett opens this bountiful volume of Hugo's writings with his declaration from L... more Marva Barnett opens this bountiful volume of Hugo's writings with his declaration from L'Homme qui rit that 'il n'y a de lecteur que le lecteur pensif. C'est à lui que je dédie mes œuvres'(p. xv). Not only is this a pertinent reminder of Hugo's will to engage his reader, but ...
Modern Language Review, 2007
Modern and Contemporary France, 2009
French Studies a Quarterly Review, 2008
Modern and Contemporary France, 2009
Forum For Modern Language Studies, 2009
French Studies, 2008
... Morrissey's more philosophical piece on the shifting meaning of 'ch... more ... Morrissey's more philosophical piece on the shifting meaning of 'charity' and its relationship with the development of early English literary ... the constellation of Romantic lumin-aries that were reshaping the literary scene in the 1810s and 1820s, including Lamartine and Hugo. ...
French Studies a Quarterly Review, 2009
French Studies a Quarterly Review, 2008
Sartre Studies International, 2006