The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

by

Victor Hugo

The Renaissance was a period of scientific, philosophical, and cultural development in Europe that lasted approximately from the 15th to the 17th centuries. Hugo sets The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the end of the medieval period, which came right before the Renaissance, and suggests that the society that he writes about is on the brink of a major cultural change with the impending arrival of the Renaissance.

Renaissance Quotes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The The Hunchback of Notre Dame quotes below are all either spoken by Renaissance or refer to Renaissance. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gothic Architecture, History, and Art Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

We should add that Coppenole was of the people, just as the crowd around him was of the people. Thus the contact between him and it had been prompt, electric and, as it were, on level terms. The Flemish hosier’s haughty quip had humiliated the courtiers and aroused, in all these plebian souls, some sense of dignity as yet, in the fifteenth century, dim and uncertain. This hosier who had just answered the cardinal back was an equal: a sweet thought indeed for poor devils used to showing respect and obedience to the servants of the serjeants of the bailiff of the Abbot of Sainte-Genevive, the cardinal’s train-bearer.

Related Characters: Pierre Gringoire, Jacques Coppenole, The Cardinal
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 4 Quotes

Had Gringoire lived in our own day, how beautifully he would have bisected the Classics and Romantics!

Related Characters: Pierre Gringoire
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 3, Chapter 1 Quotes

And what we have said here of the facade has to be said of the church as a whole; and what we have said of the cathedral church of Paris has to be said of all the churches of medieval Christendom. Everything is of a piece in this logical, well-proportioned art, which originated in itself. To measure the toe is to measure the giant.

Related Symbols: Notre Dame
Page Number: 124
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 1 Quotes

‘No,’ said the archdeacon, seizing Compere Tourangeau by the arm, and a spark of enthusiasm rekindling in his lifeless pupils, ‘No, I don’t deny science. I have not crawled all this time on my belly with my nails in the earth, along the countless passages of the cavern without glimpsing, far ahead of me, at the end of the unlit gallery, a light, a flame, something, doubtless the reflection from the dazzling central laboratory where the wise and the patient have taken God by surprise.’

Related Characters: Claude Frollo (speaker), Louis XI/Compere Tourangeau, Jacques Coictier
Related Symbols: Gold, Notre Dame
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 2 Quotes

Firstly, it was the thought of a priest. It was the alarm felt by the priesthood before a new agent: the printing-press. It was the terror and bewilderment felt by a man of the sanctuary before the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was the pulpit and the manuscript, the spoken and the written word, taking fright at the printed word; something like the stupor felt by a sparrow were it to see the angel legion unfold its six million wings. It was the cry of the prophet who already hears the restless surge of an emancipated mankind, who can see that future time when intelligence will undermine faith, opinion dethrone belief and the world shake off Rome.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo, Louis XI/Compere Tourangeau, Jacques Coictier
Related Symbols: Notre Dame
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
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Renaissance Term Timeline in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The timeline below shows where the term Renaissance appears in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 3, Chapter 1
Gothic Architecture, History, and Art Theme Icon
The Supernatural, Rationalism, and Knowledge Theme Icon
...Europe,” for example, can be split into three periods: the Romanesque, the Gothic, and the Renaissance. The Romanesque is the oldest, the Gothic came next, and then the Renaissance followed. (full context)
Book 3, Chapter 2
Gothic Architecture, History, and Art Theme Icon
...and the Gothic—so everything in the city looked balanced and like it belonged together. The Renaissance in Europe began around 50 years after 1482 and brought a resurgence in Romanesque architecture,... (full context)
Gothic Architecture, History, and Art Theme Icon
Justice, Punishment, and Freedom Theme Icon
Since the Renaissance, the architecture of Paris has undergone many changes and lived through many ages, depending on... (full context)