The cultural baggage in the novel of V. Hugo Notre-Dame de Paris

Abstract

The totality of events constitutes our cultural baggage whose construction is finished with the life. Permanent variability of this baggage and consequently its indeterminate nature enable us to communicate it to other people in a given time and space. Interwoven into the literary text, the cultural baggage, called the intertext, is the source of knowledge about the author/reader. In this article we will trace the extent of the intertext present in the novel of Hugo. We will also determine its functions in order to show the character of relations between the sender and the reader. In Notre- Dame de Paris we find the wide repertory of intertextual forms – starting from quotation per paraphrase, literary innuendo or pastiche, and finishing with reminiscence. We observe here the presence of different affiliations: those between the novel itself and other texts of the same author, affiliations with other literary texts, historical and philosophical documents, customs and manners, historical characters, images, sculptures, music and popular culture. The author focuses his attention on the times and centuries preceding the Middle Ages and following them thus constituting a junction between the Middle Ages and contemporaneity. This diachronic glance makes the novel universal and shows that Hugo draws the conclusions by uncovering grotesque contemporaneity. The author of Notre-Dame de Paris writes his novel for the purpose of instruction. The references provided by him become the ironic comment showing the ambivalent nature of man, imperfection of the kings, the grotesqueness of the situations and the events. Thanks to the numerous references and comments the work of Victor Hugo opens a wide debate concerning art, architecture, but it also opens the political debate. It is precisely Hugo’s use of intertextuality which enables him to show grotesquenees of the world, both fictional and real.