Bibliography 16

 1 Introduction

The author of Notre-Dame De Paris, Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885), was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic Movement. He was a representative figure of the humanitarian and outstanding writer of bourgeois democracy in French literature. Hugo almost experienced all the major incidents in 19th century France. His life spanned almost the entire 19th century and his literary career has always kept enduring creativity since 60 years ago. He wrote many poems, novels, plays, essays, literary criticism and political essays articles during his lifetime and his famous works include Notre-Dame De Paris, Les Miserable, Les Contemplations and so on, all of which bring a wide range of influence in France and the world. His romantic novels permanently attracted readers due to impressive and powerful story lines.源1自3吹冰8.论~文'网·www.chuibin.com

Notre-Dame De Paris is the first large-scale Romantic novel of Victor Hugo. It lays the lofty status of Hugo as the world's famous novelist. Hugo introduced with this work the concept of the novel as Epic Theatre. About the writing background, “Notre-Dame De Paris was written in an era of changing and fierce class struggle. During this period, France society is in an important historical transition time, when any kind of conflicts is fierce and sharp” (Net.2). The novel is set in 15th century Paris. It reproduces artistically the true history during the reign of French King Louis XI more than four hundred years ago, when the court worked hand-in-glove with the church to oppress the people and the people always fought bravely with these two forces. The authors combined the vivid story and the rich dramatic scenes. The authors combined the vivid story and the rich dramatic scenes together organically, so that the novel was highly readable. The content of the story revolves around a beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda, the hunchbacked bell striker of Notre Dame, Quasimodo, and Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame who raised Quasimodo. 

In the past for a long time, people haven’t stopped their research of Notre-Dame De Paris. Whether the connotation of the novel, artistic characteristics of the novel or the author's writing technique have been all deeply studied. The articles with the key point on the fictional characters are innumerous. Through these studies and works, the researcher has achieved some new understanding of Claude’s image. Like other scholars, the researcher will mainly focus on character description and analysis in this paper, but it lays stress on the specific character, Claude Frollo and the causes of the formation of his character. It is intended to analyze Claude Frollo’s complex character to show how the external environment and inner personal factors affect the formation of people’s personality. Claude Frollo is the novel's main antagonist. His image largely shows the broad historical content of the novel and reflects the author's aesthetic and religious views. He has multiple personalities and his character directly reflects the social conditions and the strong confrontations between rational spirit and religious belief. 

This paper begins with a brief introduction to the social conditions in the 19th century to help readers understand the theme of the novel. It then continues with the background of Claude’s life and the exemplifications of his complex characters. Finally, the causes of the formation of Claude’s complex character and the tragic ending of the novel are analyzed to deepen the theme of the paper, that is, how environment affects the formation of one’s personality.