Victor Hugo and Islam

Muhammad and the Quran appear around a hundred times in the works of Victor Hugo. He sought in the Quran a path to understanding the divine and found in the Prophet a model with whom to identify. Islam represented a source to quench his eschatological thirst and an object of inspiration and meditation in his fervent quest for spirituality. Victor Hugo overcame the Islamophobic prejudices of his youth thanks to a maturation and an ecumenical openness that allowed him to discover the richness of the Muslim faith. His poetry contains some of the most beautiful pages ever written by a non-Muslim on Islam and its prophet. Yet, critics have largely overlooked their place in his work. This book explores, for the first time, a rich and little-known aspect of this theme. It combines an analysis of the significance of religion in Victor Hugo’s work and the way in which Islam permeated his poetry, highlighting its role. played out by this religion in its work and, consequently, in the French literary heritage. The text is enhanced with reproductions of period engravings.