Verniana — Jules Verne Studies / Etudes Jules Verne — Volume 2 (2009–2010) — 133–148

Distraction et écritures mécaniques chez Verne : deux exemples

Nicolas Saucy

Abstract

This article highlights a specific intertextuality between Surrealist literature -- in particular of André Breton -- and Jules Verne that might offer a new appreciation and interpretation of the Extraordinary Voyages: one element of this intertextuality is in the use that Verne makes in his narratives of psychic automatism, which appears first in Journey to the Center of the Earth in the form of Axel’s mechanical writing and later in the form of Paganel’s “providential distraction” in The Children of Captain Grant. A new reading of these works is proposed in the light of this aspect of Surrealism, a reading that emanates from the principle of the joy of the trouvaille.

Full text (in French):