Quasimodo

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For the 20th century Italian poet awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959, see Salvatore Quasimodo.

Image:ND-de-Paris-L1-Quasimodo.png Quasimodo is the protagonist of 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by French author Victor Hugo. Born with extreme physical deformities, including his infamous hump, Quasimodo was found abandoned on the doorsteps of Notre Dame on a Quasimodo Sunday (after which he was named) by the archdeacon Claude Frollo, who adopted the baby and brought him up to be the bell-ringer of the cathedral.

Looked upon by the general populace of Paris as a monster, Quasimodo later fell in love with the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda and attempted to rescue her when she was entangled in a murder. His heroic and selfless act against the many dark plots behind Esmeralda's fate created one of Hugo's most acclaimed masterpieces.

Quasimodo's name is a pun on the author's behalf. Frollo found him on the cathedrals doorsteps on Quasimodo Sunday, and named him after the holiday, inadvertedly calling him "half-formed".

[edit] Modern portrayal

Many film adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame have been made, which take various degrees of liberty with the novel. In the 1996 Disney animation, for example, Quasimodo is neither one-eyed nor deaf, and is capable of fluent speech. Among the actors who have played him over the years are: