News & Events

Victor Hugo’s Fight against the Death Penalty: The Beginning

Marva offers a UVa Flash! Seminar on connections between Hugo’s battle against the death penalty and death-penalty cases today, most particularly the Theresa Lewis execution in Virginia last September 24. 

Discussion will focus on the beginning of Hugo’s modern novella, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, and two of his works of art that lobby against state-sanctioned murder:

  • His famous 1854 drawing of a hanged man, ECCE LEX [LINK “ECCE LEX” to
    http://www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/fr/oeuvre/ecce-lex-le-pendu
  • La Conscience humaine devant une mauvaise action (1866) / Human Conscience Faced with an Evil Act, in which Hugo drew an arm and hand reaching out from nowhere in a strong “halt” gesture

Monday, November 22, 2010 5:00-6:30 p.m., in Hotel D on the East Range, University of Virginia.