Quasimodo
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- For the 20th century Italian poet awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959, see Salvatore Quasimodo.
Quasimodo is the protagonist of the 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre Dame de Paris in French) 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".
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. This Disney film also changes the ending to a much happier one than is featured in Hugo's novel, in which both Quasimodo and Esmerelda die. Among the actors who have played him over the years are:
- Lon Chaney, Sr., in the 1923 silent film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Charles Laughton, in the 1939 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Anthony Quinn, in the 1956 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Anthony Hopkins, in the 1982 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Tom Hulce, voice actor for Quasimodo in the 1996 Disney animation The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its sequel.
- Garou, played the part of Quasimodo on-stage French version of Notre-Dame de Paris in the late 1990s.
See also
- Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, after which Quasimodo was named.
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