| The absence of Jules Verne from the literary cannon creates a large void. In addition to being the father of the science fiction literary genre, his works, especially Around the World in Eighty Days, are reflective of the French culture that produced him. This exploration of Verne’s aforementioned text examines the historic culture of France in the early 1870s and the results from the rules of Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon III; establishes a link between cultures of power and their literary tradition through the scholarship of Ian Watt, Mikhail Bakhtin, Margaret Doody, and Jared Diamond; closely examines the Hindi tradition of Suttee in the European popular culture that Verne would have been exposed to this practice as well as the character of Aouda as a product of Imperial rule; and discusses the importance of the Victorian era’s use of telegraphy, transportation improvements, and tradition of timekeeping both in historic development and in relation to the text. |
