Medievals fascinations: Berent and Hugo

Abstract

The theme of Middle Ages, discovered by the Romantics, reappears in literature at the turn of the 19th and the 20th century. My objective is, by referring to Genette, displaying the transtextuality limited in my receptive perspective to everything that pertains to the relation of two novels, The living stones by Berent and Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. The author of Notre-Dame de Paris assimilates particularly the rabelaisian tradition of presentation of the medieval world. The model of the medieval culture, as depicted by Hugo, is thus grotesque. Berent, on his part, perceives the Middle Ages through the spectrum of the Anglo-Saxon tradition and refers to the Arthurian myths. Both novels have two distinct levels, the Romanesque, and the esthetic and philosophical one, the latter dominating in the first as well as in the second text. Both authors attempt to give us a complete vision of the Middle Ages. Berent tries to fill the spiritual vacuum, the lack of knowledge, of feelings and of profound reflection about the Middle Ages. The author of The living stones points to the gaps through which the human thought emanated in order to seek answers to existential questions and to search for truth. Both the Christian faith and the ancient religions are present in Berent’s medieval man, remaining in osmotic relation. The same type of relation, although present as well, is less developed in the text by Hugo. His objective is rather to defend the national heritage, which procedure does not stop himhowever from depicting the absurdity of power and of contemporary life. We observe therefore two distinct points of view on the Middle Ages in the two novels in question, the romantic and the modernist one. But the dimension of both works is universal, each one exercising a different influence. Hugo gives a grotesque vision of life and of the human being. Berent presents the yearning for freedom, the price for which is life itself.