![]() ![]() The flowery gentleman voice becomes one that invokes more suspense than a leisurely promenade through the city of Singapore. The Sioux raid, Aouda's daring rescue, and the Henrietta's survival of the hurricane all contain more intense, curt language. When these scenes come up, such as Passepartout vaulting a somersault and breaking the planks of the dock in the process, or the English and American insults thrown by Phileas and Colonel Stamp, the gentleman vocabulary becomes sort of comedic.ĭuring times of great stress for the characters, the wording becomes sparser and sentences get shorter. Still, Verne isn't against throwing in a comedic joke or a good old-fashioned rumble in for fun. It's about a gentleman gambler, after all. So we think the style works well for Phileas Fogg's story. It's the language of a gentleman-an intelligent one at that. But the point isn't just that he's an author writing during a specific time period (when a large vocabulary proved how smart you were). ![]() Verne uses difficult and outdated words so much that we're forced to tie a dictionary to the hand we aren't holding the book with. Jules Verne isn't one to use two words when fifty will do, and he does it with all the flair of a Victorian gentleman. ![]() Another word that comes to mind is snooty. When we say "high," we mean high vocabulary. ![]()
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