A Re-reading of Jules Verne’s 'Around the World in Eighty Days' with Postcolonial Lenses

Töngür A. N., Sözer A. N.

Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, cilt.43, sa.1, ss.276-284, 2026 (TRDizin)

Özet

In Around the World in Eighty Days (1870), Phileas Fogg, and his assistant, Passepartout circumnavigate the world on a wager with Detective Fix pursuing him to arrest. Fogg’s experiences, adventures and observations during the round-the-world voyage with almost every transportation means available exhibits a wide repertoire of people, cultures, religions, flora, fauna, and geographies in the world in the 1870s. However, when the novel is read through postcolonial lenses, the outlook of a Victorian gentleman and the net the British Empire threw on the colonies are easily discernible. The aim of this paper is to show that Verne’s protagonist, Fogg, possesses all the qualities of an ideal Englishman in the Victorian Age like punctuality, precision in detail, planning as well as indifference, reserve, restraint, resolution in the wake of setbacks, in his relationships with other people and in the accomplishment of his aims. This study also attempts to display that a postcolonial analysis of Verne’s work reveals that Fogg’s and his companions’ confrontations with the non-white, non-European people reflect the supremacist, hegemonic, condescending and colonialist mindset as Verne’s Eurocentric characters are drawn to possess ‘superior’ morality and culture, physical strength, intellectual capacity, resourcefulness, and chivalric behaviour.