Victor Hugo, Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné

Fiona Cox (University of Exeter)

Ed. by Nigel Harkness, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.05: French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century , 1800-1900.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Nigel Harkness (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield), Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford)

Dates

First circulation or publication Feb 1829

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

On February 3^rd 1829 the twenty-seven year old Victor Hugo published Le Dernier jour d”un condamné. The book is a fictionalised diary of a prisoner’s obsessive despair from the day that his sentence is pronounced, through the period of waiting alone in his prison cell in Bicêtre, to the day of his execution. The condemned man’s thoughts never stray far from his own predicament, but he nevertheless muses upon the nature of capital punishment, its physical and psychological tortures, the role of the state in selecting a judicious and humane punishment, and the history of those who have inhabited his cell before him. His diary is an account of the last few weeks of a man’s life, rather than just the final day. …

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1196 words

Citation: Cox, Fiona. "Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 March 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34170, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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