Exorbitant Geometry in Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize

Abstract

Quatrevingt-treize is a puzzling work for the contemporary reader. It satisfies few of the expectations we hold for a novel, a historical novel, or even a novel of abstract ideas as the text is often characterized. The reader is struck by the hyperbolic language of the text, its apparent artificiality. Frequent authorial interventions-often in whispering nominal phrases-comment not only on the events of the histoire, in the double sense of that word, but also on the literary status of those events, and, implicitly, on the kind of language necessary for their representation-Rien de plus tragique, l'Europe attaquant la France et la France attaquant Paris. Drame qui a la stature de l'epopee (135).1 In William Shakespeare Hugo characterizes the genre of the novel as cette merveilleuse nouveaute litteraire qui est en meme temps puissance sociale ... (epique, lyrique et dramatique amalgame.2 The novel, thus defined, is a suitably monstrous form for the referent 93-monstre sublime.