Victor Hugo, La Légende des siècles [The Legend of Centuries]

Katherine Lunn-Rockliffe (University of Oxford)

Ed. by Jennifer Yee, University of Oxford
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.05: French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century , 1800-1900.
Vol. editors: David Elwyn Evans (University of St Andrews), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Elisabeth Gerwin (University of Lethbridge), Nigel Harkness (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield), Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1859

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

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La Légende des siècles

is a verse epic charting the history of humanity, which was published in three series at quite different points in Hugo’s life. Each series encompasses the whole of history from beginning to end and consists of self-contained poems narrating specific episodes, many of which are either fictional or little-known, presented as embodying the spirit of their age. When Hugo started work on this project in the 1850s, he was a successful lyric poet living in Guernsey, in exile from Second Empire France. The epic genre was still weighed down by neoclassical conventions, but Hugo reinvented it by fragmenting history into short dense narratives and introducing techniques drawn from other genres, particularly drama and satire but also lyric poetry. Most poems use the form,…

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2123 words

Citation: Lunn-Rockliffe, Katherine. "La Légende des siècles". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 March 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11231, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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