Telling true stories through fiction: Exploring intertextuality in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues and French Pacific travel narratives

Abstract

Jules Verne was renowned for weaving literary, non-fiction and scientific sources into his fictional adventure narratives. While many have explored Verne’s intertextuality with other fiction writers (such as Baudelaire, Scott and Poe) and the origins of the technological innovations in his stories, few studies have analysed how Verne textually adapted his non-fiction source material into the literature of fiction. This paper examines the original French text of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870) with related passages from the voyages of the French Pacific explorer Dumont d’Urville (1826-29 and 1837-40). Verne’s story can be seen as part of a flow of knowledge from journals, exploration narratives, scientific accounts, through popular travel and natural history publication to fictional stories – an ongoing process of adaptation that continues today into computer games, comics, graphic novels and movies. Verne draws upon his non-fiction sources not only for accurate content, but also for narrative structure and literary devices, while also adapting and re-arranging factual material to suit the demands of an adventure story. Verne’s landmark novel illustrates how Verne adapted literary devices across fiction and non-fiction but also how factual accounts ripple into broader popular culture through the mediation of fiction.