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502.More information
Like most Romantic novelists, Victor Hugo scorns laughter and levity. This paper concerning the 1869 novel L'homme qui rit scrutinizes the following paradox: while Hugo considers laughter as an essentially negative phenomenon, a manifestation of either cruelty or suffering, he nevertheless strives to make his readers laugh. Victor Hugo is indeed a humoristic writer, even though his representation of laughter is invariably critical. The character of Ursus, a portrait of the artist as an aging erudite, is emblematic of this contradiction between theory and practice, a contradiction that often stems from Hugo's mock-knowledge of things past and humoristic visions.
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