Victor Hugo, Theopoet: Investigating a Phenomenology of Divinity in Selected Exile-Period Poetry

Abstract

This thesis argues that there is a theological poetics within Victor Hugo’s exile-period poetry worth developing. While decades of scholarship have compiled criticism on Hugo’s religious thought during his exile from France (1851-1870), most have tended towards historical and biographical or sociological explanatory frameworks that do not interface with either theology or philosophy of religion as theoretical disciplines. A major exception has been Jean-Pierre Jossua’s 1980 study, entitled “Essai sur la poetique theologique de Hugo,” which identified a specific poetics displaying both positive and negative representations of divinity in his poetry. Beginning from Jossua’s study, we propose t..