Hybrid Creatures, Hybrid Politics, in Hugo's Bug-Jargal and Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné

Eighteen twenty-six marks a turning point in Hugo's political evolution. This study investigates the complexities and tensions of that time of transition by looking at two prose works published that year: Bug-Jargal and Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné. Without conveying a clear political position these works are loaded with covert political contradictions and ambiguities, most interestingly present in their many hybrid constructions. Some, like argot in Le Dernier Jour, or Habihrah the dwarf in Bug-Jargal, are grotesque, negative. Others, however, such as the narrator of Le Dernier Jour, a condamné of high birth and the character of Bug-Jargal, in whom opposites (prince, slave, rebel) coexist, are highly seductive and add a powerful streak of literary and political dissension to the overall conservative outlook. (PG)