NOTRE-DAME AS ARCHITECTURAL AND AESTHETIC MONUMENT

Abstract

Introduction. Under certain conditions, a literary work can turn into a social project. The significance of the architectural monument is comparable to the impression of the work of art. Subject. This article attempts to show that Victor Hugo, in Notre-Dame de Paris, actualizes the Middle Ages by reworking the significance of the historical dynamic. No other French Literature work is closely related to its author, as it is Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris. Object. Notre Dame, the magnificent Paris cathedral becomes an omnipresent character. First, we explain that the romantic writer tries to revive the medieval past preserved by ancient monuments and to create thereby a link between Architecture and Literacy. Afterwards, we will see how Hugo gives a convincing form to his Middle Ages, by rooting it a contemporary discourse. Purpose. We will identifie a way of interaction of different historical periods. We want to show how the romantic poet superimposes historical moments in order to represent an age of transition. The purpose of the article is also to identify and analyze the stylistic features of the novel, due to the author’s aesthetic concept. Finding. The novel is carefully structured, like the building, which divided vertically and horizontally into three parts. In the novel, the metaphor is born as a huge chimera with two heads (towers), three eyes (Gothic roses on three facades) and three portals that seems to devour the crowd. The number in the novel becomes not only a substantial component of the literary text, but also forms a characteristic principle of the ternary composition. Numbers are transferred to the sphere of others semantic fields what allows to reconstruct the image of the cathedral through the use of a variety of stylistic technics. Thanks to the Victor Hugo novel, the cathedral was recognized as a world treasure. Architectural metaphors and metonyms of the novel reveal the socio-historical and aesthetics significance of the building. Victor Hugo’s novel «Notre-Dame de Paris» and, in general, a 19-century novel is an illustration of Parisian space-time. It clearly demonstates the inextricable link of literature, history and architecture.