Victor Hugo has been trending on Twitter in France as students lash out angrily after the Year 12 Baccalaureate exam - and are in turn condemned by others for their disrespectful attitude, notes Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine in a report for BBC News.
The author of Les Misérables and the Hunchback of Notre Dame was repeatedly called the son of a prostitute, and worse, last night.
Two other French authors Louis Aragon and Claude Roy also came under fire, but for some reason Hugo took the brunt of the attack, after the four-hour test "Poetic writing and search for meaning, from the Middle Ages to the present day".
One of the options was to write a commentary of Le Crépuscule, a Hugo poem in which a blade of grass, representing life, holds a conversation with a grave, representing death.
Among the more publishable comments:
"Victor Hugo if I run into you on the street you're a dead man."
"Now I hate Victor Hugo, Aragon and Roy. No in fact I hate poetry. No, no, in fact I hate the bac, period."
"Victor Hugo because of you I flunked my bac."
Students had already turned to social media to complain about exams on philosophy, history and geography, but in smaller numbers.
The backlash from critics helped to get the subject trending:
"A respectful thought to Victor Hugo who, on this day of French bac, shines a light on the vulgarity and stupidity of our time," writes a councillor from a town in northern France.
"Dear students, you'd be better off respecting Victor Hugo rather than these stupid reality-show participants."
"Who do you think you are to insult Victor Hugo? Just because you are illiterate doesn't mean you should pick on his writings."
Read more of this report from BBC News.