The restless crowd threatens to lynch Gringoire and his cast if they don't start immediately, and everything degenerates into chaos and comedy. He's waiting for the Archdeacon to show up to see his masterpiece and become his patron. The first main character to whom we are introduced is Pierre Gringoire, a hapless, penniless playwrite. They soon become quite rowdy, and the scene proceeds in a slow but humorous fashion, spanning several chapters. Parisians flock to the Palais to be entertained, and here we see our first glimpse of the classes mingling: academicians, bourgeois, clergy, and beggars all throng about in the Palais clamoring for the play to begin. Among the events being held that day in the city of Paris is a Mystery play at the Palais de Justice. The novel begins with the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools in January, 1482. He was obviously fascinated by the history and architecture of medieval Paris (as is alluded to in the foreword), and boy does he want to tell you about it. Victor Hugo was writing a historical novel set 350 years before his time. Written almost 200 years ago, Notre-Dame de Paris is set in 1482.
But Lon Chaney and Disney cartoons notwithstanding, this story is as much about the city of Paris and Our Lady of Paris as it as about a hunchback and a gypsy dancer. At some point an English translator decided that Quasimodo was the main character, and so forever after Hugo's novel has been translated into English as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Most of the film adaptations (starting with the 1923 Lon Chaney one) cast it as a gothic horror piece, thus associating the "hunchback" reference even more strongly with the novel. Contrary to what every movie based on the book would lead you to believe (see below), it is primarily about Paris and the cathedral and medieval French society, against which backdrop a story of obsessive lust, naive love, and betrayal unfolds.
The proper title of Victor Hugo's novel is Notre-Dame de Paris.
Written with a profound sense of tragic irony, Hugo's powerful historical romance remains one of the most thrilling stories of all time. When Esmeralda is condemned as a witch by Claude Frollo, the tormented archdeacon who lusts after her, Quasimodo attempts to save her but his intentions are misunderstood. It is the story of Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of the Notre Dame Cathedral, who falls in love with the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda.
Set amid the riot, intrigue, and pageantry of medieval Paris, Victor Hugo's masterful tale of heroism and adventure has been a perennial favorite since its first publication in 1831.
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