The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The novel has been described as a key text in French literature[1] and has been adapted for film over a dozen times in addition to numerous television and stage adaptations such as a 1923 silent film with Lon Chaney a 1939 sound film with Charles Laughton and a 1996 Disney animated film with Tom Hulce. The novel sought to preserve values of French culture in a time period of great change which resulted in the destruction of many French Gothic structures and threatened to trivialise the vibrancy of 15th-century France. The novel made Notre-Dame de Paris a national icon and served as a catalyst for renewed interest in the restoration of Gothic form.