Ultra-blood Christian Ethics And The Adoption Plot Of Hugo's Novels

As one of the most influential leading writers of French romanticism during the enlightenment period, Victor Hugo created a large number of works with superb artistic achievement and ideological value. When reading Hugo's works, the author of this paper found that in his novels like Notre Dame de Paris, L'homme Qui Rit, Les Travailleurs de la Mer, Les Misérables, and Quatre-vingt-treize, Hugo used the theme of adoption, repeatedly depicting various adoptive plots and showing adoptive acts that commonly existing in people's lives. It can be said that adoptive plot was a particular favorite of Hugo, and the cause of this is worthy of deep study.The study of this paper starts with the nature of adoptive act. As a super-consanguineous ethic way of forming a family, adoptive act shows the philanthropy of the Christian and the humanism of the Hugo's period. As a result, the paper studies Hugo's affection of adoptive theme from the following two angles: one is the influences of Christian moral thought on Hugo and as well as on people's morals and behaviors of the western society; the other is the humanism of Hugo.This study finds that living in the enlightenment background of the 19th century, Hugo was deeply influenced by the Christian moral thought, whose advocacy of philanthropy was admired by him. On the other hand, being a product of the French cultural development and heritage, Hugo's humanism was a combination of the Christian moral thought and secular cultural thought, advocating transforming human mind by the moral influences of humanity and kindness. An author's thought is always naturally revealed during the process of his literary creation, and this can be a good explanation of Hugo's affection of adoptive plot. Consequently, this paper concludes that the adoptive theme in Hugo's works is one of the carriers of his humanism, which can be traced back to the influence of the Christian moral thought on him.