Modernist Circumnavigations: Around the World in Jules Verne's Wake

Description

This book shows how Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days changed the global imagination. Through his novel, the world was converted into a personal itinerary, scaled to the individual traveller and, by extension, to the individual reader. Exploring Verne’s modern legacy, this study shows how subsequent generations of artists and writers took on Around the World in Eighty Days as an adaptable guidebook to the modern world. It investigates how Verne’s work leads its reader beyond the book itself. It considers Verne’s place in world literature, traces some of the many real reenactments of Verne’s itinerary, and recalls the theatrical adaptations of Verne’s story. Published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the first circumnavigation and the 150th anniversary of Verne’s novel, this book offers new insights into the largely overlooked influence of Verne on twentieth-century literature and culture and on the field of global modernism. Acknowledgments Contents List of Figures Chapter 1: A Circuitous Way of Making Sense of the World The Writing of Circumnavigation Jules Verne Modernism and an Around-the-World Method The Itinerary Around and Around Part I: Scripting the Itinerary Chapter 2: Describing a Circumference: Jules Verne’s Guidebook for the Modern World A Newspaper, a Wager, and a Chronotope The Imperial Guidebook and the Logistical Novel Fiction’s Fulfillment and the Footpath Around the World A Matter of Perspective: Jules Verne Writes on the Globe Chapter 3: The Portable Printing Press: Jules Verne as World Literature Verne in the World, Verne in Translation The Portable Printing Press and the Railway Pioneer Reading Le Tour du monde in Allahabad Part II: Committing Circumnavigation to Print Chapter 4: The National Character Abroad: The New York World and The Cosmopolitan Nellie Bly in the Pages of Mechanical Reproduction In and Out of the Library The Writing on the Horizon Chapter 5: Playing Nellie Bly: On the Travel Writing of an American Girl Playing the American Girl Abroad The Loyalties and Apologies of an American Writer The Afterimage of the Fastest Circumnavigation Chapter 6: The Other Direction: Elizabeth Bisland’s Guide to Cosmopolitan Composition Realism in Reverse: Travel Writing’s Horizons of Expectation Cosmopolitanism at Sea: A Moving Room of One’s Own Seeing the Elephant: On the Surprises of Home Part III: The Modernist World Stage Chapter 7: Jean Cocteau’s Around-the-World Performance: Notes on Sensation This Is How the World Begins (as Theater) Writing Ajar; or, the Practices for the Meantime This Is How the World Ends (on the 81st Day) Chapter 8: A Modernist Theatrum Mundi: Orson Welles and the Theater of Attractions Verne’s Drama and the Theater of Attractions The Instructions of Silent Film Portals to Elsewhere: Worldmaking at the Theater’s Edges From the Incomplete to the Impossible Chapter 9: Verne in the American Century: Circumnavigation as a Foreign Policy The Rise of American Circumnavigation The First in Around-the-World Flight Hail Noble Captain, It Is Done Again Bibliography Index