| Zusammenfassung: | This first study of the manuscripts of "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas" shows that before the publisher's harrowing censorship, the antepenultimate chapter of the novel was radically different. In the earlier drafts Captain Nemo supports the French Revolution and Republican ideas, and the ship he attacks, in legitimate self-defense, is French. In the original "Conclusion," Nemo survives and is not criticized by the egregious Aronnax, but rather praised as the ultimate free man. In the light of these variants, changing the ideological tenor of the novel, it would appear increasingly urgent to have further detailed textual knowledge of the publisher's censorship, so as to understand Verne's real intentions in writing his masterpieces.
|
|---|