Victor Hugo, orateur politique: 1846–1880 (review)

Victor Hugo's work as an orator has not received much critical attention, despite the fact that he participated actively in politics and delivered numerous speeches before political assemblies over the course of his career. In her thorough and well-organized book, Marieke Stein offers an account of this understudied dimension of Hugo's œuvre: le discours politique. She investigates the role played by Hugo's political discourses in his broader literary œuvre, and attempts to distinguish Hugo's oratory practices and objectives from those of other political figures of his time. Her goal, she explains, is not so much to provide an account of the ideological content of the discourses, but rather, "comprendre toute la richesse d'une conception particulière de l'orateur, de son langage, de sa fonction, de sa position de parole, et d'analyser les discours politiques de Victor Hugo pour en dégager une position d'énonciation et une stratégie discursive originales" (9).

In delimiting her corpus, Stein chooses to study all the discourses pronounced by Hugo that are invested with a political function, whether delivered within or outside of a formal institutional context. She also analyzes Hugo's undelivered speeches. She focuses on the corpus of edited discourses compiled and published by Hugo in Actes et Paroles I–IV (1875), while supplementing this corpus with material from other sources.

The book contains four major parts, each of which is broken down into chapters. Part I provides an introduction to Hugo's conception of the orator and his functions. The first chapter studies the recurring figure of the héros-orateur as he appears in literary works such as Claude Gueux, Sur Mirabeau (an 1834 essay), Les Misérables, and L'Homme qui rit. The Hugolian orator repeatedly serves as a spokesman for the needs of the peuple: since his discourse tends to be revolutionary and transgressive, it is never well-received. Subsequent chapters present Hugo's conception of political eloquence as elaborated in his various prefaces, political essays, novels, and personal writings. For Hugo, eloquent speech should be simple, direct, elevated, and well-written.

Part II offers a chronological account of Hugo's work as an orator, focusing on the forms of eloquence he cultivates at different moments in his career, which spanned four political regimes and included membership in five different assemblies. Hugo begins by assuming a conciliatory and moderate tone in his speeches before the Chambre des Pairs (1846–48). His style gradually becomes more direct and provocative as he shifts to the political left, culminating in his role as an opposition leader in the Assemblée Législative (1849–51). After discussing Hugo's political activities during his long period of exile, Stein concludes with an analysis of Hugo's participation in the Senate of the Third Republic, where he argues tirelessly for the amnesty of the communards. Part II is especially engaging: it provides an interesting account of the causes Hugo defended as a politician and the political climates in which he worked.

In Part III Stein undertakes a formal analysis of the discours that complements the more thematic approach taken in Part II. She analyzes Hugo's speech-writing process through a study of his drafts, and identifies the major structural and rhetorical features of his discourses. She discusses his tendency to memorize and recite or even read his speeches, rather than improvising them. Improvisation was considered desirable in nineteenth-century political discourses, and Hugo was often criticized for his lack of spontaneity. She also evaluates the dramatic aspects of his speeches, which borrow techniques from the drame romantique.

Part IV offers an historical account of the reception of Hugo's discourses, both at the time of their delivery and after his death. While Hugo almost always lost his political battles, Stein suggests that his speeches nevertheless had a moral impact on their audience. Her argument that Hugo was an effective speaker who served the Republican cause seems in some ways unconvincing, given the amount...