When Does "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (1831) Take Place?
"Notre-Dame de Paris" (released for English-speaking audiences as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame") is a tragic novel written by Victor Hugo and released March 16th, 1831.
It takes place in the year:
We know this because the narrator states, "It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its entry into Paris" (the Treaty of Arras set these final terms when it was signed in the real world on December 23rd, 1482 AD) and the real-world French King Louis XI appears and speaks in book 10, chapter 5 (he died on August 30th, 1483 AD). So it should be between late 1482 AD and August of 1483 AD.
1482 AD
We know this because the narrator states, "It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its entry into Paris" (the Treaty of Arras set these final terms when it was signed in the real world on December 23rd, 1482 AD) and the real-world French King Louis XI appears and speaks in book 10, chapter 5 (he died on August 30th, 1483 AD). So it should be between late 1482 AD and August of 1483 AD.
More specifically, Louis XI says, "when in ’79 it did not exceed six and thirty thousand livres, did it attain in ’80, forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen livres? I have the figures in my head. In ’81, sixty-six thousand six hundred and eighty livres, and this year, by the faith of my body, it will reach eighty thousand livres! Doubled in four years! Monstrous!" " So "this year" is strongly implied to be 1482 AD.
HOWEVER, the narrator tells us, at the very top of the second paragraph of book 1 chapter 1 (and many more references to time are made), it is explicitly "The sixth of January, 1482" and later "the morning of the seventh of January, 1482". The story's main action covers less than a week though it's unclear as to whether it's early or late 1482 AD.
Additionally, book 11 chapter 4 forms an epilogue that the narrator tells us vaguely is "About eighteen months or two years after the events which terminate this story". The epilogue is therefore in 1484 AD.
1482 + 2 = 1484.
This Shmoop article examines its exact setting.
It has been adapted as a short film in 1911, to film in 1923, to film again in 1939, then again in 1956, a video game in 1983 titled simply "Hunchback", to animation in 1996, then to film in 1997.
