390 Victor Hugo
The History of Literature
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Hugo Cromwell's Essay on Shakespeare
Hugo viewed the world as having occurred in three stages, primitive, ancient and modern. For him, primitive was roughly the same as hymns. Ancient was governed by epics and tragedies. And modern, from a poetic sense, was a christian world that yoked together tragedy and comedy. It's an impressive and heady document. As it sets out no less than his view of the history of civiliz ation and his view of poetry as it makes its way through the various stages of human development.
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