Biblical Themes in the Legend of the Centuries by Victor Hugo

This diploma thesis deals with the role of biblical themes in the collection of poems The Legend of the Centuries by Victor Hugo. First chapter pursues selected aspects of the collection (humanistic values, conception of history, character and time aspects). The aim of the second chapter is to put the collection into the literary context of the concerned period (romantism, symbolism) and into the context of the author's philosophical and religious ideas. This part considers the relation among the collection, the myth and the psychoanalysis. Focus of the thesis lies in the third part that analyzes selected poems of the collection. These are classified according to the role of biblical aspects. The first type of Hugo's application of the biblical elements is represented by an opening poem of the collection "La Vision d'ou est sorti ce livre", which refers to the biblical stories, characters and themes via different poetic techniques. The second group of poems represents a direct updating of the biblical stories. The last type unifies the author's convictions with the biblical elements and recreates the so-called biblical poems. The aim of the thesis is to research this new type of myths that Victor Hugo creates throughout the biblical themes