Tim Unwin
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languages that they have initiated. Necessarily messy, extensive, expansive, Verne’s style goes in the direction of proliferation rather than
or synthesis and unity. It assimilates alien terms, often with an arbitrariness that verges on the cavalier. But herein, precisely, lies the interest and the innovative quality of Verne’s work. He is
quintessentially of his time in terms of his subject matter, his geographical range, his capturing of the spirit of the age in his stories of
exploration and discovery. But he is of his time, too, in terms of his
experimental approach to the novel, and in his extension of the very
vocabulary and idiom of fiction into the domain of science and
knowledge. It is true that, in pursuing this goal, Verne comes close at
times to destroying the foundations of fictional coherence and credibility. Yet it is precisely there, in that radical mise en cause of what
literature now is, or can be, that he most deserves to be taken seriously. There is, in Verne’s scientific discourses, an intensely modernistic and sceptical attitude towards the very business of writing.
Writing can no longer be “innocent”, and through his own “histoires
de la terre” Verne is intensely, abundantly, promiscuously and exultantly intertextual. With Verne, it seems, geography and its many related disciplines have definitively invaded the novel and transformed
its status.
170
languages that they have initiated. Necessarily messy, extensive, expansive, Verne’s style goes in the direction of proliferation rather than
or synthesis and unity. It assimilates alien terms, often with an arbitrariness that verges on the cavalier. But herein, precisely, lies the interest and the innovative quality of Verne’s work. He is
quintessentially of his time in terms of his subject matter, his geographical range, his capturing of the spirit of the age in his stories of
exploration and discovery. But he is of his time, too, in terms of his
experimental approach to the novel, and in his extension of the very
vocabulary and idiom of fiction into the domain of science and
knowledge. It is true that, in pursuing this goal, Verne comes close at
times to destroying the foundations of fictional coherence and credibility. Yet it is precisely there, in that radical mise en cause of what
literature now is, or can be, that he most deserves to be taken seriously. There is, in Verne’s scientific discourses, an intensely modernistic and sceptical attitude towards the very business of writing.
Writing can no longer be “innocent”, and through his own “histoires
de la terre” Verne is intensely, abundantly, promiscuously and exultantly intertextual. With Verne, it seems, geography and its many related disciplines have definitively invaded the novel and transformed
its status.