NovelGuide: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: Novel Summary: Book V Chapter 2

Select a Chapter:

Book V Chapter 2

Summary
The narrator uses this chapter to explore the meaning of Frollo's assertion that the printing press produced book will destroy the church. The narrator draws two conclusions, the first that the dissemination of knowledge through mass-produced books will undermine faith and eventually the church and its authority. The second meaning is that as books become easier to print and acquire they will supplant architecture as man's means of transmitting ideas. He expounds at great length upon this idea and concludes that Guttenberg's press has robbed architecture of its former glory and station as chief repository of mankind's ideas. He concludes with the observation that books are "the second Tower of Babel of the human race."