Naming the Master: The Evolving Significances of "Victor Hugo" in 19th-Century French Literature

No name dominates the literature of the French 19th Century—and after—as pervasively as Victor Hugo’s. Thanks to this ubiquity, the evolving meanings of this name are visible in works by Hugo and by those who wrote under Hugo’s shadow. This study foregrounds the power of the act of naming to modify the significance of the name “Hugo,” from Sainte-Beuve and Gautier to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé. The meanings of Hugo’s name, a name that both demands respect and yet also inspires dissent and revolution, depend upon its myriad interpretations from a community of namers that stretches as far as his renown. The import of “Hugo” lies in the hands of the namer, quite like the name of “God.” Through close readings of prefaces, poetry, novels, and essays, this dissertation analyzes these writers’ incorporations and projections of particular meanings of Hugo’s name in their works. While staking out their own subsequent literary revolutions, these writers often incorporate Hugo’s name to express both recognition for his contributions and resistance to their perceptions of his literary mission. By relying upon the philosophical approaches to “naming” offered by Plato, Lacan, Althusser, Genette, and Kripke, this investigation traces the creations and dissolutions of different meanings of the name “Hugo” that he and other 19th-century French writers projected. What does a signature signify? What kind of authority do such references implied in creation itself possess? These are questions developed in this study, which distance it from analyses of “influence” and “reception.” Examining the aftermath of what has been named illuminates how names come to be more dramatically re-appropriated or reductively understood over time. While Hugo’s death immediately renders his name more vulnerable to scathing critique from some writers, it also marks the beginning of the immortalization of his name as one to be both honored and confronted by others. Engaging with the conflicting combinations of promulgation, erasure, reverence, and profanation with regard to Hugo’s name leads to a reflection of “authorial authority” in History and on figures of “literary immortality.