SOURCE: "Victor Hugo and the Prophetic Vision," in Nineteenth-Century French Romantic Poets, Southern Illinois University Press, 1969, pp. 91-129.

In the following essay, Denommé examines Hugo's poetic oeuvre, stating that it is representative of the development of French Romanticism. The critic concludes: "Hugo's poetry invites us to strip away the restrictions dictated to us by practical reason and experience in order to view the world more directly with our emotions."

The widespread association still made today between the name of Victor Hugo and the term Romanticism attests to the prominence that he enjoyed within the movement both in France and on the Continent during the nineteenth century. The wide range of his poetry from the early academic declamations of "Les Vierges de Verdun" ("The Virgins of Verdun") to the cabalistic symbolism of the posthumously-published collections, La Fin de Satan (The End of Satan) and Dieu (God) recounts the history...