Jules Verne, a noncontemporary?

Résumé 0

We often imagine Verne as an unconditional admirer of modernity. But his enthusiasm for technical prowess is always tempered by a basic pessimism about the damages of progress. How to think of the ambiguity of modernity in Verne? We propose here a journey into Vernian writing, which successively uncovers three geological layers in his work. The narrative layer opposes heroes and anti-heroes, places, objects and machines that may be beneficent or maleficent. As we explore further, we discover that these characters and plots take on a mythological dimension centred on the figures of Prometheus and Faust. Finally, we have to go further, behind the intrigues and figures, to detect the elementary frameworks of involution and explosion that feed the imaginary world of the Voyages extraordinaires (Amazing Journeys) and that are reflected in the opposition of the Shell and the Volcano. Verne is not an author of science fiction, but rather of socio-political anticipation: he describes, as a visionary, the ambiguity of our modernity that many 20th-century philosophers will attempt to conceptualise.