Jules Verne's Textual Mapping: Plotting Geography Julia
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository JULES VERNE’S TEXTUAL MAPPING: PLOTTING GEOGRAPHY JULIA ELIZABETH RAMALEY MASTRO A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (French). Chapel Hill 2008 Approved by: Dr. Hassan Melehy Dr. Martine Antle Dr. Federico Luisetti Dr. Donald Reid Dr. Jean-Jacques Thomas ©2008 Julia Elizabeth Ramaley Mastro ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT JULIA ELIZABETH RAMALEY MASTRO: Jules Verne’s Textual Mapping: Plotting Geography (Under the direction of Dr. Hassan Melehy) Jules Verne designed his series of Voyages extraordinaires around the premise of painting or depicting the earth. It is with this in mind that I explore the idea that Verne is a geographical writer whose style reproduces a voyage, or an itinerary, that creates overlap, or a space of communication, between the ordinary and the fictional worlds. The product of this overlap, or this style, is what I term the textual map , which is a metaphor for the reading experience as a compilation of movements through a geographical location described textually. The textual map differs from the literary map, therefore, because rather than linking to or identifying a location in order to assign it a relative place, it assumes a perspective that is at the ground level so as to describe movement through instead of over a geographical location. The textual map and the associated literary and geographical terminology express Verne’s style that is nonlinear, an amalgam of his own research, and the impressionistic manner by which he combines descriptive geographical visions to convey a space rather than a place, as expressed by de Certeau. Specifically, I concentrate on Deux Ans de vacances , Le Phare du bout du monde and En Magellanie , three of the Voyages extraordinaires and in which Verne visits the most southern area of South America. With each of these textual maps, Verne employs a textual legend, or a key to reading the geographical novel, and a way for the author to write a perspective that is part of the geography rather than a view of it from a distance. I classify iii three categories of the legend: the identification of the island location, the movements of the characters who inhabit the island and the author’s own narrative voice. Studying these aspects of Verne’s writing and the textual map, or studying Verne as a geographical author, allows for an interdisciplinary approach to reading an author who was himself interdisciplinary in the sense that he crossed traditional lines of discourse and applied his research in a product-oriented manner. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks go out to all of you who had a part in making this possible, but most particularly my husband who has always found perspective, my parents who have made so much possible, my friends who have learned when not to ask how things are going, and the random people I have chanced to meet along this journey who are honestly excited by my project. My thanks go as well to the enthusiastic members of the North American Jules Verne Society as well as the worldwide Jules Verne community who gave me momentum and encouragement when I most needed it. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I: PLOTTING GEOGRAPHY............................................................................... 1 CHAPTER II: INTRODUCTION TO THE TEXTUAL MAP.............................................. 10 II.A. Le Roman de la Terre................................................................................................. 14 i.To Paint the Earth ......................................................................................................... 15 ii. Matters of Public Opinion .......................................................................................... 24 iii. The River that Flows in Two Directions ................................................................... 28 iv. L’enfant amoureux de cartes et d’estampes............................................................... 32 II.B. Ob Terras Reclusas..................................................................................................... 37 i. Tactic and Style ........................................................................................................... 38 ii. Cartography and Geography....................................................................................... 43 iii. The Old New Science ................................................................................................ 49 iv. Literature and Geography .......................................................................................... 53 v. Writing a Map ............................................................................................................. 61 vi. More Than One Geography ....................................................................................... 70 vii. The Real and the Imaginary...................................................................................... 72 II.C. Locating Verne’s Sources........................................................................................... 76 i. Interactive and Isolationist........................................................................................... 76 ii. The End of the World as He Knew It ......................................................................... 80 iii. The Cape Horn Archipelago...................................................................................... 92 vi II.D. Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 95 CHAPTER III: INTRODUCTION TO THE TEXTUAL LEGEND ..................................... 98 III.A. The Geographical Limits .......................................................................................... 99 i. Geographical Limits – Looking away from the Island .............................................. 101 ii. Geographical Limits – Looking Toward the Island.................................................. 110 III.B. Filling in the Blank Spaces with Characters ........................................................... 115 i. Deux Ans de vacances ................................................................................................ 117 ii. Le Phare du bout du monde ...................................................................................... 125 iii. En Magellanie .......................................................................................................... 133 iv. Character Legend ..................................................................................................... 144 III.C. Reading Literary Legends ....................................................................................... 145 i. Vox Verne-acular....................................................................................................... 146 ii. Para literati or Discourses......................................................................................... 153 iii. The Author Speaks .................................................................................................. 157 iv. Three Points…Ellipses............................................................................................. 169 v. Cross-References....................................................................................................... 177 III.D. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 189 CHAPTER IV: INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCHIPELAGO .......................................... 193 IV.A. Neither Island nor Continent .................................................................................. 200 IV.B. Insularity and Utopia............................................................................................... 222 IV.C. A Gap in Technology.............................................................................................. 245 IV.D. The Possibility of Genre ......................................................................................... 260 IV.E.Conclusion................................................................................................................ 274 vii CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................ 278 APPENDIX........................................................................................................................... 281 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................. 286 viii CHAPTER I: PLOTTING GEOGRAPHY Mon but a été de dépeindre la Terre, et pas seulement la Terre mais l’univers, car j’ai quelquefois transporté mes lecteurs loin de la Terre dans mes romans. Et j’ai essayé en même temps d’atteindre un idéal de style. On dit qu’il ne peut pas y avoir de style dans un roman d’aventures, mais ce n’est pas vrai; cependant j’admets qu’il est beaucoup plus difficile d’écrire de tels romans dans un bon style littéraire que les études de caractères qui sont tellement en vogue aujourd’hui. (qtd. in Compère and Margot 92) These words published in McClure’s Magazine in 1894 from an aging author past the peak of his success and giving what the journalist refers to as an “account