She concludes that It was the publication of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831 that gave rise to restoration fever in the first place (121). Levine adds to this by arguing that Hugo's concern for the fate of French medieval architecture was actually a fundamental reason for writing Notre-Dame de Paris.ictor Hugo's preface to Cromwell was seen by many as a manifesto of Romanticism. The image of Victor Hugo straddling the Theatre Francaise, the Academie Francaise, and Notre-Dame evokes the idea of him as a man capable of bridging the arts with his ideas regarding the Gothic past and the Romantic present.