Because the Hunchback of Notre-Dame was discovered on Quasimodo Sunday – hence his name – people often think that Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris starts at Easter. Not so; it opens with scenes of carousing and bell-ringing in medieval Paris on the feast of the Epiphany in 1482. The commotion had been caused, as Hugo puts it, by anticipation of “the twin ceremony of Twelfth Night and the Feast of Fools, which had fallen on the same day since time immemorial".
Notre-Dame de Paris therefore makes good Christmastide reading, which is something to look forward to at this stage of Advent: wise men, jesters, rich, poor, food, wine and galettes de rois. Apart from the story of Quasimodo, Esmerelda and Frollo, and themes of good and evil, love and lust, and everything in between, there’s another hero (or perhaps heroine) that comes to the fore: the cathedral itself.
