Character and meaning in the novels of Victor Hugo

"With an approach that combines attention to genre, narratology, and reader-response criticism, as well as consideration of Hugo's own critical and philosophical writings, Roche explores the ways in which Hugo's novels eschew the realist notion of the representable individual in favor of a new - and surprisingly modern - kind of fiction in which character serves as a conceptual, nonpsychological function. Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo provides a deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances that characterize both Hugo's novel writing and the nineteenth-century French novel, and will thus appeal to the specialist and nonspecialist alike."--Jacket.