English-speaking world, perhaps because of the nationality of
the central figure. But its joyous tone and surface positivism
are in reality subverted by a tendency for any authority to be
mocked and for parts of the story to prove extremely unreli-
able. The work is also significant in its use of new conceptions
of psychology.

Any explicit philosophizing is, however, abhorrent to
Verne's pragmatic mind. There exists a distinctive Vernian
metaphysic: the absence of metaphysics. Some critics have
attempted to establish a coherent ideology or other theoretical
construct from their readings of Verne's works. But these
studies have generally been one-sided, for they have usually
neglected the form for the content--consequently missing
Verne's irony and ambivalence. Other commentators have
claimed that real events do not impinge on the works, that the
author only feels happy thousands of miles from reality, lost
in some unmarked icefield or underwater labyrinth. The truth
lies in fact somewhere in between: the amount of contempo-
rary reference and implicit ideology in Around the World,
especially, is quite staggering. But the real-world referents are
merely an entry into the Vernian scheme of things. His abiding
interest is man's position in the cosmos--making him one of
the last of the universal humanists.

Again, Verne's technique is often amazing. The very idea
that narrative devices might exist in the Extraordinary
Journeys Into the Known and Unknown Worlds would ini-
tially meet with incomprehension and disbelief in many
people. But their appeal to the most varied of audiences be-
comes more explicable when the texts are studied carefully.
They are the product of a long and arduous literary appren-
ticeship, together with a visionary inspiration and an un-
paralleled amount of perspiration. Verne's works are full of
pioneers and inventors who are ignored or misunderstood--
perhaps standard fare. But his own technique involves radical
innovations which themselves remained undiscovered for
more than a century.

He omits, for instance, to use the two main past tenses over
an entire novel ( The Chancellor, 1873). Not only does this
alter its structure and perspective--especially since there is

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