Recommendations
Books Like La Légende des siècles
Best books to read after La Légende des siècles by Victor Hugo
Hugo's most ambitious poetic project (1859-1883) — three volumes of poems narrating the moral history of humanity from Genesis to the future, including 'Booz endormi,' 'Les Pauvres gens,' and 'Le Satyre.' If this vast philosophical epic moved you, these books explore similar territory.
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Buy on AmazonLes Contemplations
by Victor Hugo
The great lyric companion written in the same exile period — where La Légende des siècles narrates the moral history of humanity, Les Contemplations narrates the moral history of a soul; reading both gives the full range of Hugo's exile poetry.
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Buy on AmazonLes Châtiments
by Victor Hugo
The political satire from the same exile period — the three great exile works (Les Châtiments, Les Contemplations, La Légende des siècles) represent Hugo's political, personal, and philosophical voices at their highest intensity.
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Buy on AmazonLes Quatre Vents de l'esprit
by Victor Hugo
The late collection that continues the epic ambition of La Légende des siècles in the context of extreme old age — the epic book of Quatre Vents is the most direct sequel to the Légende.
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Buy on AmazonLa Divine Comédie
by Dante Alighieri
The great medieval epic that Hugo explicitly invokes as the predecessor of La Légende des siècles — both narrate the moral universe of their civilization, one through the journey of an individual soul, the other through the episodic history of humanity.
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Buy on AmazonParadise Lost
by John Milton
The great English philosophical epic — Milton's ambition to 'justify the ways of God to men' is the closest predecessor to Hugo's ambition to narrate the moral progress of humanity, and 'Booz endormi' is often compared to Milton in its ability to achieve the sublime without excess.
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Buy on AmazonL'Odyssée
by Homère
Homer's epic — Hugo invokes Homer as one of the prophetic geniuses of the tradition, and many of the medieval and ancient poems in La Légende des siècles are in direct dialogue with the Homeric tradition.
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Buy on AmazonWilliam Shakespeare
by Victor Hugo
Hugo's critical essay — the theoretical companion to La Légende des siècles, in which Hugo develops the argument about genius and prophecy that explains what the Légende is trying to do.
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Buy on AmazonLa Fin de Satan
by Victor Hugo
Hugo's unfinished companion epic (posthumously published 1886) — the philosophical counterpart to La Légende des siècles, narrating the moral history of evil rather than of humanity, with Satan as the tragic protagonist of cosmic history.
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