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Re: Les enfants de Capitaine Grant

From: Terry Harpold <tharpold~at~english.ufl.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 14:04:37 -0400
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

On Friday, April 9, 2004, ithompson~at~geog.gla.ac.uk writes:

>I am grateful to Doug. Henderson of the National Marine
>Aquarium for the following information on the Balance
>Fish/Hammerhead Shark. "The species (of Hammerhead) most
>likely to be seen is Sphyrna zygaena, which occasionally
>occurs in northern European waters. Wheeler (1978) says
>"recorded 5 times in the present century in northern
>European waters, and at least 7 times in the 19thC". I can
>find no reference to any further North than South Wales.
>Hence while a sighting (in Scotland) is feasible, it is
>pretty unlikely". To return to Sid's point, it looks as
>though out of the 29 species of sharks recorded in UK
>waters, Verne chose the least likely one to be found in the
>Clyde.

Very nice bit of research. The very improbability of the catch confirms, I think, the textual significance of this object at the center of the opening chapter of the novel: "le poisson-balance des Anglais, le poisson-juif des Provençaux" (EG, I, i, p. 5 in the LdP edition).

Verne must have been more interested in the evocations of these "fishy" names than in zoological accuracy: the action of the novel tips, turns, etc. on the "balance" of the fish's unlikely capture (and the more unlikely contents of its gut, far removed from where they must have been consumed?); the fish is, literally, a Wandering Jew [juif errant], and will induce others to wander aimlessly. The opening of _Captain Grant_ is, I think, repeated in a sense in the opening of _Le Chateau des Carpathes_, in which another figure of the Wandering Jew (the itinerant merchant) introduces the novel's main characters to an unlikely "insight"...

TH

--------------------------------
Terry Harpold
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Florida

tharpold~at~acm.org
tharpold~at~english.ufl.edu
http://www.english.ufl.edu/~tharpold
Received on Fri 16 Apr 2004 - 21:04:58 IDT

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