Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

maps of the globe were shrinking fast. Verne’s novels look forward to a time when exotic countries will be too familiar to warrant further exploration, and turn instead to other unknown realms and other kinds of exploratory journey in the air, under water, inside the Earth, or in outer space. Verne’s distinctive combination of extant methods and tools of exploration and imaginary realms and landscapes exerted a shaping influence on the emergent genre of the scientific romance and, later, of science fiction.
    Jules Verne’s career, after his years as a minor playwright, took a decisive turn in the 1860s when the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel accepted his novel Five Weeks in a Balloon for publication, and made him into one of the regular contributors to the Magasin d’ éducation et de recreation (Magazine for Education and Entertainment). Over the subsequent four decades, many of Verne’s novels were first published in this magazine, in serial form. In fact, Journey to the Center of the Earth is unusual among Verne’s works in that it was published in book form rather than serially, in 1864, just before Hetzel’s magazine got off the ground. Because Hetzel’s magazine was designed to appeal to younger readers, Jules Verne’s writings are sometimes still considered to be adventure reading for youngsters rather than serious literature. Yet Verne’s enormous influence on writers inside and outside of science fiction, as well as the in-depth attention he has received even from literary critics of a decidedly high-theoretical bent—prominent names such as Roland Barthes, Pierre Macherey, and Michel Serres come to mind—prove that the colorful surface of adventure and exploration in his writing hides conceptual depths that only a more mature and careful reading will unearth.
    Nineteenth-century translations that substantially rewrote and distorted the text of many of Verne’s novels and were reprinted again and again throughout the twentieth century have made it difficult for readers who cannot access the original to perceive the complexity of the author’s work. Neither have the film versions through which many contemporary readers first encounter Jules Verne contributed anything to a better understanding of his novels. Journey to the Center of the Earth has been made into motion pictures several times, including the well-known 1959 version directed by Henry Levin, which features James Mason and Pat Boone in the leading roles, and a 1999 made-for-television version directed by George Miller. Neither bears much resemblance to Jules Verne’s text, since both fundamentally alter the basic set of characters and the development of the plot. First-time readers of the novel are therefore likely to be surprised by the sophistication of its thought and language.
    But even a more faithful film version would surely have difficulty capturing the novel’s fascination with spoken and written language. Perhaps most obviously, Verne loves to take scientific language and display its lyrical and dramatic potential. From the mineral specimens in Professor Lidenbrock’s study to the numerous prehistoric animals Axel imagines in the underground landscape, scientific vocabulary pervades the novel and yet is evoked with so much energy, excitement, and playfulness that it never smacks of pedantry and cold abstraction. When scientific pedantry is on display, as it sometimes is in the sparrings between Axel and his uncle about the physical, chemical, and climatic details on which the success of their mission hinges, it is always within a context of dramatic dialogue that makes it part of fast, precise, and often quite witty repartees that would no doubt play well on a stage. Verne’s abundant use of semicolons and exclamation marks in the novel, in addition, helps to convey the sense of breathless excitement that often grips his characters when they are on the trail of an important discovery or conclusion.
    Speech and writing also play an