The greatest work of one of France's greatest writers, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables seemed stylistically and even politically out of date when it was published in 1862. But its indictment of injustice, concern for those suffering in misery, unapologetic embrace of the ideals of the French Revolution, and memorable characters have proved irresistible to readers for a century and a half. The novel's length, multiple narratives, and encyclopedic digressiveness make it a pleasure to read but a challenge to teach, and this volume is designed to address the needs of instructors in a variety of courses that include the novel in excerpts or as a whole. Part 1 of the volume, ""Materials,"" provides guidance on editions in French and in English translation, biographies, criticism, and maps. Part 2, ""Approaches,"" contains essays that discuss the novel's conceptions of misere, sexuality, and the politics of the time and that demonstrate techniques for teaching the context of its literary market, adaptations, place in popular culture, and relation to other novels of its time.
Michal Peled Ginsburg is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University. Her main research areas are the nineteenth-century European novel (especially in France and England), narrative theory, and Israeli fiction. She is the author of Flaubert Writing: A Study in Narrative Strategies (Stanford University Press, 1986), Economies of Change: Form and Transformation in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Stanford University Press, 1996) and Portrait Stories (Fordham University Press, 2015); co-author of Shattered Vessels: Memory, Identity, and Creation in the work of David Shahar (SUNY Press, 2004); and editor of Approaches to Teaching Balzac's Old Goriot (2000). Bradley Stephens is senior lecturer in French at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on the reception and adaptation of French Romantic fiction, with a particular interest in Victor Hugo. He is the author of numerous studies and articles in this field, including his book Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Liability of Liberty (Legenda, 2011) and a new introduction to Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Signet Classics, 2010), and has co-edited several collections, most recently ""Les Miserables"" and its Afterlives: Between Page, Stage, and Screen(Ashgate, 2015). He is currently working on a critical biography of Hugo for Reaktion Books.
This collection constitutes a rich educational tool for instructors of French who want to teach and study this great novel."" - Jacques Neefs, Johns Hopkins University
