![]() ![]() ![]() Most are inspired to take my course because they love the musical. I was inspired primarily by my students’ reactions to Les Misérables. A recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award, UVA’s highest honor, and the founding director of the school’s Center for Teaching Excellence, Barnett spoke recently with Colloquy about Les Misérables and the lessons of humility, love, and forgiveness she thinks it holds for people living through times of crisis and division. In her new book, To Love Is to Act: Les Misérables and Victor Hugo’s Vision for Leading Lives of Conscience, she draws on a lifetime of scholarship not to investigate the novel’s literary merit, but instead to explore its ethical teachings. ![]() Marva Barnett, PhD ’80, professor emerita at the University of Virginia (UVA), has spent years studying Les Misérables and the work of its author, the French poet and novelist Victor Hugo. If you’re Jean Valjean, the protagonist of the epic novel Les Misérables, you do the only thing you can: you show mercy to your enemy, Inspector Javert, and let him go, even though you know that he will try to capture you again. ![]() Now, finally, you have him at your mercy, pistol in your hand, with every reason to execute him. ![]()
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