Victor Hugo and the Politics of Masculinity, Representations of Nineteenth-Century French Virility in Les Châtiments (1853)
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Jacobs, Michael P.
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Romance Studies
- Abstract
- This thesis demonstrates how 19th-century French author Victor Hugo used masculinity as a trope to illustrate the sociopolitical destruction of France under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Using Hugo’s collection of poems in Les Châtiments (1853) as the primary point of inquiry, analysis of his literary work and political interventions shows how the author depicted Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as a tyrant whose tenure as Emperor precipitated the destruction of France’s national sense of virility. Hugo in turn, I contend exhorts the French people to recuperate their virility in order to reject Napoleon III. Furthermore, I examine the historical relationship between Napoleon III and his uncle, Napoleon I, and how Napoleon III’s appropriation of the symbolism that characterized Napoleon I allowed Hugo to emasculate Napoleon III for representing the antithesis to his uncle’s likeness. Finally, this thesis explores how Hugo’s literature and political activism revirilized France at the beginning of the Third Republic.
- Date of publication
- spring 2015
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Tanner, Jessica
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 53
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