Olhos de pedra: história e monstruosidade em Notre-Dame de Paris

Abstract

The nineteenth-century literary sensibility, permeated by the Romantic thought, questioned and blurred the conventional frontiers between opposite conceptions as beauty and ugliness, good and evil, real and fantastic. It redefined what aesthetic tradition named “grotesque”, giving it an unprecedented importance in art. Nevertheless, more than simply an aesthetic option, the recurrence of the monstrosity theme in nineteenthcentury fictional works frequently uncovered the restlessness of that time concerning the course of History. Based on these propositions, we analyze in this article Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris, in its possible intertwining with visions of History as monstrosity.