Research Paper on:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the 19th century. His work "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" or "Notre Dame de Paris, Volume XII" was written in 1831 and in Hugos preface to that volume he writes  how he was influenced by the dark Gothic writing he had once seen on the walls during a visit of his to Notre Dame. For Hugo it was that fact  that the words had been inscribed on the wall many centuries previously that impacted him as he tried to visualize the cathedral during the Middle Ages; an image which resulted  in the novel. The novel depicts a darker time in Paris during the 15th century when the city had criminal and influential elements which led to the eventual demise of  the central characters of the loyal hunchback Quasimodo, the gypsy Esmeralda and Dom Frollo who deceived and used them for his own selfish desires. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" opens  "precisely three hundred and forty-eight years, six months and nineteen days ago" on the morning of January 6th, 1482 in which the people of Paris were awakened by the bells  of the cathedral. While Hugo attests that nothing of particular significance took place on that day, it was nevertheless the day which "set the whole population of Paris in a  stir" as it was the date of a double festival: that of the Festival of the Three Kings and that of the Feast of Fools (Hugo, I, I). Pierre Gringoire  decides that his play should be performed while the Festival of Fools is temporarily delayed but is cut short when the procession arrives and demands that the Prince of Fools  be chosen. The Prince of Fools is the one chosen who is the ugliest among the crowd and Hugo writes that "the pulling of faces began ... eye-lids turned inside