Sh:in:E

a project of the English Department at Basel University

(Victor Hugo)

Hugo was a passionate advocate of a United States of Europe, conceived in socialist and republican terms, not imperial Napoleonic ones. In his will he left his books to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which he said would one day be the library of the United States of Europe. If he had been asked who would be the poet of the United States of Europe, he would doubtless have hoped that it would be himself, but he would unhesitatingly have replied: Shakespeare.

Bate, Jonathan. The Genius of Shakespeare. London, Picador: 1997. p.239

last changes: July 2007