The Man Who Laughs de Victor Hugo

The Man Who Laughs

Victor Hugo

Paul-Thomas Ferguson

Karly Steele

While living in the Channel Islands during his exile from France, Victor Hugo wrote L'Homme qu rit (The Man Who Laughs, 1869), one of his last novels. Using the early 18th century British political system as a backdrop, Hugo tells the story of a sideshow performer named Gwynplaine, whose hideously scarred face (purposely disfigured by torturers to produce a permanent grin) forces him to become an entertainer. As Gwynplaine's fortunes rise, he carries the desperate voice of the people to the ears of the aristocracy, with tragically predictable results. In The Man Who Laughs, Hugo is unrepentantly Republican in tone, producing perhaps his most biting and cynical tale, in which, he damns the power elite for the injustice and inhumanity inherent in their maintenance of class distinctions, all the while crying in the darkness for what he hopes is an inevitable change on the horizon. The result is a pathos-laden tragedy, full of both wit and woe.

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Notă biografică

Victor Marie Hugo (1802 - 1885) was a French poet, novelist and dramatist of the Romantic movement. Hugo is considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. Outside of France, his most famous works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862 and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831. In France, Hugo is known primarily for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations (The Contemplations) and La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages). Hugo was at the forefront of the romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. Many of his works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the musicals Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables. He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.