Actes et paroles, by Victor Hugo

the theatricalization of the political text in the speeches against misery and death penalty

Abstract

Victor Hugo’s political trajectory as a politician became known for his fight for freedom of speech, social justice, and against the death penalty. As an expressive author of the Romantic movement, he questioned the neoclassical rules of literary writing, exploring the potential of language through the fusion of different and apparently incompatible literary forms and elements. Therefore, we realize that Hugo’s work is marked by the confluence of different literary genres: his drama presents epic (novel) and lyrical (poetic) elements; his novels are loaded with poetic prose and dramatic actions; his poetry is strongly prosaic. In his political speech, the coexistence of antithetical forms – sometimes in conflict, sometimes in harmony – is evident, insofar as the author fuses the sublime and the grotesque, prose and poetry, the legendary and the historiographical, the novel and the poetic, and especially drama. In this regard, we seek to highlight the theatricalization of the political text in Actes et Paroles considering the presence of theatrical signs in two speeches uttered in the French Legislative Assembly: one for the abolition of the death penalty and the other for the approval of state assistance to those vulnerable because of misery.