Antoine Picon, "Urban Sensing: Toward a New Form of Collective Consciousness", in Humanizing Digital Reality: Design Modelling Symposium Paris 2017, Springer Nature, Singapore, 2017, pp. 63-72. (original) (raw)

This article examines the 19th-century European perception of architecture – and architectural style – as an expression of history and culture that can only be fully explicated through a verbal, literary text. This concept was particularly active in discussions of national identity. Architecture was both reflective on a national culture and at the same time called upon to further reflect and express that culture. On this basis arose critical interpretations of eclectic, historicist architectural styles. The article discusses the origins of this historicist concept in Victor Hugo’s novel Notre Dame de Paris and its elaboration in the work of Nikolai Gogol, Fedor Dostoevsky and the Marquis de Custine.Keywords: architectural stylization, historicism, eclecticism, Carlo Rossi, Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, Nikolai Gogol, Aleksei Martynov, Fedor Dostoevsky, Paris, St. Petersburg, Mosco

Published in 1831, the classic historical Gothic romance The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is representative for narratology, since the plot is majestically set in medieval Paris and Victor Hugo manages to create a specific Middle-Ages atmosphere without having studied in a formal manner about the specificity of medieval times, therefore he is a medievalist avant-la-lettre. Moreover, it is important to underline Hugo's attention to details, the realism of description and the manner of giving shape to vivid characters, the predilection for creating memorable, powerful epic moments with a deep religious-ethical component. Furthermore, our purpose is to analyze medieval and modern elements in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, also insisting on the symbols present in the novel, its impact on the readers and also the narrative techniques used by Victor Hugo.

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.

The importance of architecture in Hugo's work cannot be over-emphasized. The only locations mentioned in detail are those which have some tie to the Gothic; these locations are also where the novel is bound. Hugo does well in personifying buildings such as Notre Dame, giving the cathedral as much of a voice as those who dwell within her. Within the confines of the Gothic cathedral, human depravity at its fullest is displayed through characters such as Frollo, while the same walls showcase the grandeur of human achievement through the beauty of Notre Dame. The cathedral and the Court of Miracles are not bound by the staunch rules of society, choosing rather to shelter those whom the world rejects inside their dark confines. Likewise, characters such as Quasimodo, Frollo and Esmeralda doubtlessly see themselves reflected in the supposedly unfeeling architecture, choosing to live within a realm which ordinary society cannot understand.