Shakespeare's Biography

Author: (French) Victor Hugo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: The critic Hugo, one of France's most important Romantic writers and one of its greatest poets. In 1826, he joined the Romantic "Société des Cénacles" founded by Notre-Dame. In 1827, he published the poetic drama Cromwell and its famous preface, becoming a true Romantic. In 1829, he wrote the poem Les Orientales, which aligned with the Romantic style with its Eastern regional colors. He opposed the formal rules of classical tragedy and advocated for drama to emulate Shakespeare, seeking greater freedom and truth. He was a defender of freedom and ideals, justice and universal love. The critic Shakespeare is regarded as "the greatest writer of all time," "not belonging to an era but to all centuries." German critics emphasized his extraordinary artistic talent, while British critics highlighted his identity as an "outstanding poet" and an "excellent observer of humanity." Romantic writers shifted the focus of criticism from concentrating on the "beauty" and "flaws" of works to explaining the joy and delight that readers or theatergoers have always felt in the plays.
Recommended for the following readers:
- Lovers or critics of Western culture, Romanticism, or Classicism
- Lovers or critics of biographical literature
- Lovers or critics of French and British thought
- Students and teachers
Hugo's "Life of Shakespeare," also titled On Shakespeare, was published the year the Central Government of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom collapsed. This book is considered a "specialized work of literary criticism." In reality, Hugo used the analysis of Shakespeare to express his own Romantic ideals. As a master of French Romanticism, he believed Shakespeare was also a Romantic. This is a great literary master using his "big heart" to understand another great literary master's "big heart." This is what is truly called a "masterstroke," known in Chinese as "a stroke of fate." Through the book's boundless and insightful prose, we read not only Shakespeare but also the entire Western civilization, the "spiritual world" of Westerners passed down through millennia.
This book, which "expresses Hugo through Shakespeare," though carrying the of "the Six Classics interpreting me," is still hailed as a "masterpiece of epic and oceanic voyage." It is not only a model of brilliant wit and literary brilliance, with its eloquent and captivating language, but also regarded as a "lighthouse" or "monument" in the long history of literary theory.