Books of Stone

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo, is one of the first true novels. Book three, chapter one is Hugo's description of the chapel, then expanding out into the city. This is one of the most important chapters in literature.

Hugo was the first to do extensive research on the time and place for a work of fiction. His description of the chapel was of a "book of stone", an expression of the knowledge of humanity erected through the long labor of not only the clergy, artists and engineers, but of the whole congregation. Think Masons and their "great work". This chapter was Hugo's declaration that the prose novel would be the new "book of stone". The novel remained the medium of the "great work" until Kubrick declared the movie had replaced it with the light show sequence in 2001.

Hugo chose Notre Dame cathedral as his champion of the best expression of our divine humanity in the preceding great artistic medium. Today, it burns.

https://www.archive.org/stream/hunchbackofnotre00hugouoft/hunchbackofnotre00hugouoft_djvu.txt