(Note on the author:)

Dr William Butcher has studied at the Universities
of Warwick, Lancaster and London and at the Ecole
Normale Sup{rieure. He has taught in Malaysia and
at French institutions including the School for
Officers (Saint-Cyr), the National Economics
Institute (INSEE) and the Ecole Normale Sup{rieure
de Saint-Cloud. Before his current post at
Buckingham University, he was Head of Languages at
a postgraduate establishment in Versailles
(ISIPCA) and Matre de Conf{rences at the National
Administration School (ENA). As well as publishing
numerous articles, he has co-written a book
entitled Mississippi Madness: Canoeing for Cancer.
In addition to his literary interests, Dr Butcher
researches in French society and in Computational
Linguistics.




(BLURB:)

The works of Jules Verne have undergone a major
reevaluation in France in recent years, based on a
recognition of their sustained literary value and
their unique influence on subsequent creative
writers. In Britain, however, no full-length
scholarly study of Verne has ever appeared.
         It is this remarkable gap, where the
best-selling writer of all time - and the only
Frenchman to have achieved truly universal
renown - is either completely unknown or
travestied, that Dr Butcher brilliantly fills
here.
         Another original feature is the full
analysis of a recent discovery: Michel Verne's
posthumous, and often tongue-in-cheek,
contribution to the Voyages extraordinaires,
including the masterpiece 'L'Eternel Adam' (1910).
Journey to the Centre of the Self argues that the
very large number of journeys undertaken by the
protagonists of both of the Vernes, whether under
the seas, through the airs, or into space,
represent a desire for transcendence. All the
searches for the human, animal and mineral
curiosities of the globe are also a search for
lost time. One novel indeed, Voyage au centre de
la Terre, employs an extended spatio-temporal
metaphor to transport its heroes through the
vertical layers of the past and into a primordial
time-before-time, thus constituting a dramatic and
convincing portrayal of travel in time.
         Verne's obsession with cannibalism - and
corresponding currents of abnormal sexuality - has
clear psychoanalytic roots; but this study looks
at the precise structural consequences of the
deviant acts and thus arrives at some remarkable
conclusions.
         Verne is also highly innovative in the
stylistic area. Le Chancellor (1870, 1875) is the
first novel in continuous prose to have been
written in the present in French (and possibly in
any Western European language); and L'Ile @ h{lice
(1895), the first in the present and the third
person. This discovery of Dr Butcher's leads to an
observation of genuinely experimental writing, for
the present tense, with its ultimately destructive
self-reference, perfectly expresses Verne's self-
consciousness, introspection and tendency to self-
destruction.
         The conclusion reunites these divergent
spatio-temporal strands, in terms of such
recurrent obsessions as inside-outside, self-
others and plausibility-creativity. The most
salient event of the nineteenth century is
observed to be the closing of space represented by
the closing of the age of exploration. What begins
therefore as a journey of exploration becomes the
journey into the past and finally ends up as a
journey to the centre of the self. This 'message'
is relayed, in subtly rewritten or pastiched form,
in the posthumous works - and thus makes Jules-
and-Michel very much more modern than has been
realised. Dr Butcher's dense and wide-ranging
study will revolutionise thinking about Verne in
the English-speaking countries.


Prof Malcolm Bowie: 'Original, impressive (...)
and intelligent'

Prof Ross Chambers: 'Eloquent and powerful'

Prof Edward J. Gallagher: '(...) A paradigm
through which to study Verne (...) intriguing,
provocative, stimulating (...). Any further study
(...) will have to come to terms with (Journey to
the centre of the Self)'