Abstract
Through a parallel analysis of two seminal texts in turn-of-the-century cycling literature from each side of the Channel, this article explores how cycling offered a new means of structuring texts. Both written during the bicycle craze of the mid 1890s, these contemporary novellas offer a compelling opportunity for an examination of the bicycle’s literary role, since the vehicle is central to the plot and structure of each book. Wells and Leblanc explore new means of structuring and punctuating their texts according to the rhythms of cycling, remaining attuned to the contours of the land and the steady movement of the body and the machine. The intense physical and sensory experience of movement on two wheels invites an altered experience of space and time, which these authors seek to convey in writing.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
A Drama in One Mile. 1897. The Humours of Cycling, 52–53. London: James Bowden.
Augé, Marc. 1992. Non lieux: introduction à une anthropologie de la supermodernité. Paris: Seuil.
Augé, Marc. 2008. Eloge de la bicyclette. Paris: Payot.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Choi, Yoonjoung. 2012. “The Bi-Cycling Mr Hoopdriver: Counter-Sporting Victorian Reviving the Carnivalesque.” Critical Survey 24: 102–115.
Conrad, Joseph. 2007 [1900]. Lord Jim. Edited by Allan Simmons. London: Penguin.
Derrida, Jacques. 1993. Spectres de Marx: l’état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale. Paris: Galilée.
Edensor, Tim. 2014. “Rhythm and Arrhythmia.” In The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, 163–171. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Forster, E. M. 2000 [1910]. Howards End. London: Penguin.
Furness, Zack. 2010. One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Gruber Garvey, Ellen. 1996. The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kennard, Mary E. 1896. A Guide Book for Lady Cyclists. London: F.V. White & Co.
Kern, Stephen. 1983. The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Unversity Press.
Leblanc, Maurice. 2012 [1898]. Voici des ailes. Vierzon: le Pas de côté (Translations from French provided in the text are my own, with the original given in endnotes.).
Lukács, György. 1971. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. Translated by Anna Bostock. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Meiner, Carsten Henrik. 2008. Le carrosse littéraire et l’invention du hasard. Paris: PUF.
Nye, Edward. 2000. A Bicyclette: Anthologie. Paris: Sortilèges.
Ridge, Pett. 1897. “The Junior Constitutional.” In The Humours of Cycling, 29–31. London: James Bowden.
Rosa, Hartmut. 2013. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. Translated by Jonathan Trejo-Mathys. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 1986 [1979]. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Translated by Anslem Hollo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Senf, Carol A. 1998. Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism. New York: Twayne Publishers.
Spinney, Justin. 2007. “Cycling the City: Non-place and the Sensory Construction of Meaning in a Mobile Practice.” In Cycling and Society, edited by Dave Horton, Paul Rosen, and Peter Cox, 25–45. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Spokelets. 1897. The Humours of Cycling, 93–94. London: James Bowden.
Thompson, Christopher. 1999. “Regeneration, Dégénérescence, and the Medical Debate about Bicycling in Fin-de-Siècle France.” In Sport et santé dans l’histoire/ Sport and Health in History, edited by Thierry Terret, 339–346. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
Urry, John. 1990. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.
Urry, John. 2004. “The ‘System’ of Automobility.” Theory, Culture & Society 21: 25–39.
Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity.
Vannini, Phillip. 2014. “Slowness and Deceleration.” In The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, 116–124. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Virilio, Paul. 1977. Vitesse et politique: essai de dromologie. Paris: Galilée.
Wells H. G. 1935. The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll [1896]; The Time Machine [1895]. London: J. M. Dent.
Zemka, Sue. 2011. Time and the Moment in Victorian Literature and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brogan, U. (2019). Cycling and Narrative Structure: H. G. Wells’s The Wheels of Chance and Maurice Leblanc’s Voici des ailes. In: Aguiar, M., Mathieson, C., Pearce, L. (eds) Mobilities, Literature, Culture. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27072-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27072-8_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27071-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27072-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)