Unlike the rest of the boys, we have concrete information on Lesgle's background, yet for some reason, it appears this has not been fully explored. As I go on, in order to distinguish between father and son, the father will be referred to as M. Lesgle, and the son will referred to by his nickname, Bossuet.
The facts Hugo has set out for us:
1)M. Lesgle was in Calais in 1814 to greet Louis XVIII's return from exile.
2)M. Lesgle delivered a petition to the king asking for the directorship of a post office.
3)M. Lesgle received his post office, in Meaux.
4)Bossuet is said to be from Meaux.
5)M. Lesgle accumulated enough wealth to have owned outright one house and one field.
6)Bossuet entered into a false speculation after his father's death and lost both house and field.
7)All points above happened prior to 1828.
8)Bossuet was most likely born in 1803.
9)Bossuet is enrolled at the law school in 1828.
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Hello, nerd fandom! I've needed to do this for ages, and I've finally got it typed up in translation for those who haven't been able to utilise the resources in French.
Since fic writing requires more detail than Hugo gave, and he likely did not feel that his countrymen required more details about student life and finances (though his foreign readers might have found it useful), it's been necessary to a) dig into Balzac, who loved detail and b) do some serious digging in extant documents of the period.
I'll go into the medical school another time, since there's already good info out there in English. The current focus is on the law school and the financial burdens on students without obvious family support: in Les Mis, that's Marius and Lesgle. I'll start by explaining the law school degree structure, then go into the costs, then I'll have a bit attempting to draw conclusions for Lesgle based on the details Hugo gives. My sources are unfortunately July Monarchy rather than Restoration: some changes undoubted happened over the years. However, these sources should enable some conclusions to be drawn.
Rendu, Ambroise, ed. “Code universitaire, ou lois, statuts, règlemens de l'université royale de France”. Paris: Hachette, 1835. This covers just what it says – the laws and regulations governing the university system.
De Girardin, Emile. “De l'instruction publique en France: ouvrage utile à familles”. Third Edition. Paris: Mairet et Fournier, 1842.
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Hi guys,
I just wanted to let you know about a Zazzle store I set up a while ago selling clothing, accessories and other stuff featuring quotations from Les Mis (the book). Most of the products are available in both the original French and an English translation (usually McAfee/Fahnestock), and the mugs I have designed include both languages.
The designs are entirely a result of my messing around when I had some spare time and I'm certainly no design expert, but hopefully you might enjoy some of what I've put up there. I tried to keep them light on images (with a couple of exceptions) and focus the designs instead on the words. I've used a slightly random selection of quotations - it would take a long time to go through the Brick systematically, after all. Some were ones that have stood out to me at some point in the past and others that I have found through searching particular chapters as well as simply opening the book at random. At the moment there's a relatively high concentration of barricade-related passages. What can I say? There's some good stuff there.
I created this store during a period when I had lots of spare time, and I had intended to create a full set of products for each design. However, unfortunately, real life caught up with me and so many sections are incomplete. I hope to finish this at some point, and perhaps to start on some new designs, but this can't be in the near future due to my time commitments. However, if there is a design you like and you would like to see it on a particular product, do let me know and I will be happy to create it for you.
The store can be found at www.zazzle.com/lesmisquote*, and there are also country-specific sites including:
UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, etc
The texts I've used so far are:
"Man has one tyrant, Ignorance."
(1.I.x)
"Hope: The word that the finger of God has written on the brow of everyone."
(Adapted from 1.II.vii)
"There is one spectacle greater than the sea: that is the sky.
There is one spectacle greater than the sky: that is the interior of the soul."
(1.VII.iii)
"To write the poem of the human conscience, if only of one man, even the most insignificant man, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and definitive epic."
(1.VII.iii)
"Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labour; it is habit lost."
(4.II.i)
"God, having made the mouse, said, "I've made a blunder.""
(5.I.ii)
"To subdue matter is the first step; to realize the ideal is the second."
(5.I.v)
"Liberty: the sovereignty of myself over myself;
Equality: the concession that each makes to all;
Fraternity: the protection of all over each."
(Adapted from 5.I.v)
"Light! Light! Everything comes from it, and everything returns to it."
(5.I.v)
"Equality is not a society of big blades of grass and little oaks."
(Slightly adapted from 5.I.v)
"Brothers, whoever dies here dies in the radiance of the future and we are entering a grave illuminated by the dawn."
(5.I.v)
"Glory to the mattress that nullifies a cannon."
(5.I.ix)
"There are people who observe the rules of honour as we observe the stars, from far off."
(5.I.xxi)
"Infallibility is not infallible."
(5.IV.i)
"There is scarcely anything else in the world but to love one another."
(5.IX.v)
And these are a sample of the designs (the design for each quote varies from product to product but remains based on the themes shown here):
I'd love it if you'd check it out. :)
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I can recommend the work of Charles Marville.
There's some excellent examples online on this Paris site and in the Getty.
I was pleased to find a couple of images of the Rue Tirechappe, now vanished under (I think) the Rue de Pont-Neuf (meeting the Rue Saint-Honoré): in the Hugoverse, in the 15C this was the Frollo family home, to which 19-year-old Claude ran from the university, to find his parents dead from plague and baby Jehan crying in his cradle.
(x-post to  prouvaire)
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Earlier this year, there was a very odd production in Dresden of Schmidt's Notre Dame, updated to 1930s US, with a Jean Harlow/Roxie Hart-esque Esméralda…
Here's an English-language review and the opera house's own page on it.
There's a trailer for it here.
On the plus side, Claude is (correctly) in his 30s and (as the book demands!) gets his kit off for some self-mortification. ;-D
(x-post to  silverwhistle, prouvaire)
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I've started to get into Ninety-Three, and in parts it makes me scream.
Boys, boys… You spend all night in prison debating the philosophy and ethics of revolution, instead of doing something useful like planning an escape?!!!
And Victor, did it never cross your mind that there's a serious "squick" factor in having a girl with a chest/shoulder wound, who happens to be a nursing mother, tended by an old man…? (Clue: it's not just cows that have to be milked…)
Not to mention the usual "the higher the body count, the better" Victor attitude: no, you can't let one of your heroes live on, a sadder and wiser man, can you?
Aargh!
Anyway, I was talking about it in a café today with a friend, who's a Scarlet Pimpernel fan, and we started to develop a slightly mad notion of a crossover fic, using an episode of the BBC SP series (with Richard E Grant) as a jumping-off point… Things may get silly…
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In the 1950s, the 19C ballet La Esméralda was given a makeover, with additional music and more book-plot. This variant (which is sometimes called Gudule's Daughter, as it reinstates the Pâquette subplot) has been revived in Moscow at the Stanislavskii Music Theatre.
There's also a Royal Swedish Opera Ballet, Ringaren i Notre-Dame, from which pictures may be seen here.
(x-post to prouvaire)
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I was lucky enough to pick up a secondhand copy of this fairly cheap (because it was in French, so hard to sell in the UK!), but here it is on line. Enjoy.
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Since the last time I plugged it here, there wasn't nearly as much on it. :) Carpe Horas - a site of many things, most of them at least tangentially related to Les Misérables.
Outtakes - scraps of material collected from Hugo's notes and rough drafts, deleted scenes if you will. All the best bits (including an unexpected meeting between Patron-Minette and the Friends of the ABC, and a fanfiction-esque interlude about what happened to Tholomyès) have been translated into English, and the rest (including a strange digression on prostitution) is slowly in the course of being translated.
History - Bits and pieces about 1820s and 30s France. A timeline, modern equivalents of currency and units of measure, excerpts of letters related to the events in the book, a lot on 1830s republicanism (inluding some publications of the Society of the Friends of the People, loosely the model for the Friends of the ABC). Mostly translated into English, except the longer Friends of the People material.
Paris - Digitized maps of pre-Haussmann Paris, some links to websites on Parisian cartography, a few early 20th century photographs of the Rue Mondétour.
The Mizzie Tour Guide - Finding the places in modern-day France (particularly Paris) where the action of the novel took place. Photos of Montreuil-sur-Mer, the site of the barricade, the part of the Seine where Javert drowned himself, etc.
Cast recordings - Cast lists and distribution info for all the major cast recordings of the musical. (Yes, I know it's three years out of date.)
Translations of the French lyrics - An attempt at a literal translation of the lyrics to the 1991 Paris revival version of the musical.
And on the less serious side... fanwork (fanfiction and avatars, might soon contain essays and rants again) and silly games and Javascript doohickies.
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Les Misérables, with Brion illustrations. (800 pages, free PDF)
Notre Dame de Paris, with gorgeous frontispiece.
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a) Is this group still breathing?
b) Is it the best place for book-based Victor Hugo fandom?
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Hello!
I've just made a new community, for those of us who like to write and read stories based on Victor Hugo's works, as well as other classic novels. I'm hoping that eventually it can be an active community, with prompts, writing contests, and other fun stuff. Click and join! :P
literary_fic
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jackks has drawn attention to this over at les_sanspapiers. She has the Wordsworth paperback, which uses the HoND title, claims to be "Complete & Unabridged", but completely omits Hugo's preface about the word 'Ananké'.
I've found the same is true of the Penguin Popular Classics and the Airmont editions (both of which use the HoND title) and the 1950s Dent Everyman edition (which uses the real NDdP title). The Airmont edition is also censored, despite claiming to be "complete and unabridged": for example, it reduces the list of Pâquette's named lovers, omits Phœbus urinating on the inscription on the Cardinal's statue, Jehan's remarks about Isabeau's breasts , and La Falourdel's song. One might expect this in 19C editions, but the Airmont translation first appeared in 1968!
However, the Penguin Classics and the Oxford Classics editions (both under the NDdP title) are genuinely uncut. Apart from the Everyman edition, then, I think this is chiefly a problem with editions that use HoND as the title.
(x-post to frollophiles and hond)
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I've started a fic based on the novel, as an alternative ending: what if everyone lives…?
Last Year's Snows: An Education Sentimentale.
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Here's a scan of the gorgeous 1844 de Lemud frontispiece that shows the full main cast: ( Read more...Collapse )
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I recently got an interesting secondhand book, a study companion to NDdP by Rachel Killick, published by Glasgow University in 1994 (Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature no. 25, ISBN 0 85261 395 4). While one can argue with some of her interpretations of the text, Killick does provide interesting details on where Hugo got some character names.
A 'Jehan Frollo' appeared in the Comptes de la Prévôté as an executed murderer (a career path which one has a nasty feeling our Jehan might have taken, had he lived, being somewhat Villon-ous, if you'll pardon the expression!). He also took the name 'Claude Frollo' from Du Breul's 1612 Le Théâtre des antiquités de Paris and made them into brothers. He may also have been influenced by the recent (1829-30) scandal of a young priest, the Abbé Louis-Denis Frilay, who was sentenced to hard labour for life for stabbing the husband of a parishioner with whom he was having an affair. (The case also influenced Stendhal.)
There was a real poet called Pierre Gringoire, but his dates were 1475-1538, making him just 7, not 23, at the time of the story.
(x-post to les_sanspapiers, frollophiles and hond)
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