Parisian Sewers and Modern Novels

All rights © Agustin Biagi Vincenti

Hundreds of pages into Les Miserables, French Romantic Victor Hugo unexpectedly detours into the poetry, architecture, and civil engineering of Parisian sewers. This extensive world-building ultimately culminates in a dramatic underground escape from battle. With numerous intestinal metaphors and a belabored use of the word ‘cloaca’, he also analyzes the economic failure to convert human waste into agricultural fertilizer, an…