By the 1980s, the debates surrounding the memory of Victor Hugo seemed to have subsided after a century in which the poet had polarized opinion. Hugo could thus appear obsolete and anachronistic in a period characterized politically by the decline of ideologies, the weakening of left-wing thought, and the accepted alternation of left- and right-wing parties in government. Culturally, Hugo might seem similarly old-fashioned in an age defined by the energetic, technophile cultural policies of the omnipresent Minister of Culture, Jack Lang. And yet in 1985, on the occasion of the anniversary of his death, Hugo was feted by the governing left as a model to follow; his image was substantially freshened up and his works updated using the latest technology and media, in keeping with Lang's professed belief that everything is grist to the culture mill. An analysis of Hugo's representation at this time thus gives us an important perspective on the dynamic between the nineteenth century, as embodied by Hugo, and the 1980s, obsessed as it was with an ethos of enterprise and innovation associated particularly with that earlier era. Symbolic of a nineteenth century no longer able to connect meaningfully with the present, Hugo constitutes a fascinating lieu de memoire, bearing witness to the ambivalent and mediatized relation of the early 1980s to its republican past, its left-wing heritage, and French literary culture. Both outmoded and timeless, Hugo inspired advertising campaigns and informed political positions, being paradoxically celebrated and overlooked, at once the object of warm emulation and cool detachment. In reconstituting this nexus of discourses which helped to fashion Hugo's image in the 1980s, this study also casts a new light on our relationship today with the writer, as well as the unique place he still occupies in the French cultural and political imaginary.
