Literature for All: On Designation and Interpretation in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris

Abstract

Abstract This article contends that Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris is a novel that follows a democratic principle by opening up its meaning, and that of its titular cathedral, to anyone and everyone. Whereas Hugo’s novel and his famous syntagm ‘ceci tuera cela’ have been extensively studied as an examination of the fall of architecture in favour of the printed book, this article will argue that a semiotic analysis of the syntagm reveals Hugo’s intention to recognize the legitimacy of society’s subjects to experience and talk about (artistic) objects. Through a discussion of the chapters added in the book’s second edition and in which Hugo comments on his own work, this article recontextualizes the spatial, historical, and political components that help clarify the democratic intent at the centre of the novel, but also of its resurgence in popularity in 2019 when Notre-Dame was devastated by fire.