Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- 1 Verne, SF, and Modernity: an Introduction
- 2 Jules Verne and the French Literary Canon
- 3 Jules Verne and the Limitations of Literature
- 4 The Fiction of Science, or the Science of Fiction
- 5 ‘L'Ici-bas’ and ‘l'Au-delà’… but Not as they Knew it. Realism, Utopianism and Science Fiction in the Novels of Jules Verne
- 6 A Hitchhiker's Guide to Paris: Paris au XXe siècle
- 7 Future Past: Myth, Inversion and Regression in Verne's Underground Utopia
- 8 Measurement and Mystery in Verne
- 9 The Science is Fiction: Jules Verne, Raymond Roussel and Surrealism
- 10 Mysterious Masterpiece
- Index
2 - Jules Verne and the French Literary Canon
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- 1 Verne, SF, and Modernity: an Introduction
- 2 Jules Verne and the French Literary Canon
- 3 Jules Verne and the Limitations of Literature
- 4 The Fiction of Science, or the Science of Fiction
- 5 ‘L'Ici-bas’ and ‘l'Au-delà’… but Not as they Knew it. Realism, Utopianism and Science Fiction in the Novels of Jules Verne
- 6 A Hitchhiker's Guide to Paris: Paris au XXe siècle
- 7 Future Past: Myth, Inversion and Regression in Verne's Underground Utopia
- 8 Measurement and Mystery in Verne
- 9 The Science is Fiction: Jules Verne, Raymond Roussel and Surrealism
- 10 Mysterious Masterpiece
- Index
Summary
1863–1905
The curious contradiction of Jules Verne's popular success and literary rebuff in France began during his own lifetime, from the moment his first Voyages extraordinaires appeared in the French marketplace in 1863–5 until his death in 1905. From the publication of his earliest novels—Cinq semaines en ballon (1863), Voyage au centre de la terre (1864), and De la Terre à la lune (1865)—the sales of Verne's works were astonishing, earning him the recognition he sought as an up-and-coming novelist. He was showered with enthusiastic praise from some well-known authors, prominent scientists, and even a small number of literary critics. For example, his first novel received the following book review in the prestigious Revue des Deux Mondes in 1863:
Les grandes découvertes des plus célèbres voyageurs constatées et résumées dans un rapide et charmant volume de science et d'histoire—de l'imagination et de la vérité—voilà ce qui distingue le brillant début de M. Jules Verne. Son livre restera comme le plus curieux et le plus utile des voyages imaginaires, comme une de ces rares oeuvres de l'esprit qui méritent la fortune des Robinson et de Gulliver, et qui ont sur eux l'avantage de ne pas sortir un instant de la réalité et de s'appuyer jusque dans la fantaisie et dans l'invention sur les faits positifs et sur la science irrécusable.
George Sand is known to have written a letter to her (and Verne's) publisher Pierre Jules Hetzel saying: ‘J'ai beaucoup de tes livres…mais je n'ai pas tous ceux de Jules Verne que j'adore, et je les recevrai avec plaisir pour mes petites et pour moi.’ And the following observations in 1866 by Théophile Gautier, when reviewing Verne's Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras, were also among the first critical commentaries on Verne's works from the French literary community:
Il y a une volumineuse collection de voyages imaginaires anciens et modernes: depuis l’Histoire véritable de Lucien jusqu'aux Aventures de Gulliver, l'imagination humaine s'est complue dans ses fantaisies vagabondes où sous prétexte d'excursions aux contrées inconnues, les auteurs…développent leurs utopies ou exercent leur humeur satirique.
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- Information
- Jules VerneNarratives of Modernity, pp. 11 - 39Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2000