![]() ![]() The story is deeply human, and there is a major restoration effort that takes place after the book's publication. People really thrill to the story of Quasimodo as, you know, this bell ringer who lives in the in the tower but is also a metaphor for the tower itself. When I talked to Catherine Clark, who's a professor of French history at MIT, she told me that Victor Hugo writes this novel as an outcry to try to bring the state of Notre Dame to state attention and public attention and alert everyone that this architectural heritage is falling apart. ![]() And he really wants this architecture to be restored for future generations. And he really wants to be, basically, a celebrity advocate for Gothic preservation. ![]() The cathedral, by this point, is in a state of neglect and disrepair, still recovering from the French Revolution just a few decades earlier. LAPIN: So Victor Hugo writes "The Hunchback Of Notre Dame" in 1831. INSKEEP: What does that mean, that the novel was part of an effort to restore the cathedral? So as restorations begin again after this week's fire, we've called writer and film critic Andrew Lapin. The novel was an effort to help restore the cathedral back then. The cathedral in the title is immortalized by Victor Hugo's 1831 novel and by later film versions of the same story. "The Hunchback Of Notre Dame" was at the top of Amazon's bestsellers list in France on Tuesday afternoon. ![]()
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