高中英语必修四：unit3 Journey to the Centre of the Earth 教案.docVIP

Journey to the Centre of the Earth The plot can be quickly summarised: Professor Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel discover a document in a twelfth-century Icelandic book which, when deciphered, records the claim of a certain Arne Saknussemm to have gone down into the carter of SnFfells and reached the centre of the Earth. Lidenbrock decides to try this for himself and, dragging Axel away from his fiancée Gr?uben, travels to Reykjavik and across Iceland. With the help of the stoical Hans, they find the crater and travel down through the geological layers of the past, experiencing various adventures. A long way down, they discover a huge caver containing a large sea - plus various biological specimens, some dead and some very much alive. After trying to cross the sea, they discover a path down again, marked with Saknussemm’s runic initials. But it is now blocked. They attempt to blow up the obstacle, while sheltering on the raft, but instead carry part of the sea with them down into the bowels of the Earth. They then start rising again; and end up riding a volcanic eruption, which throws them out on the slopes of Stromboli. Journey to the Centre of the Earth prefigures many of the ideas of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, Around the World in Eighty Days, and From the Earth to the Moon. The mood is light-hearted - although hardly optimistic, for it contains tragic, obsessive and sometimes morbid elements. There is even a love-element, of sorts. In this novel, more than elsewhere, Verne seems to let himself go, while at the same time drawing inspiration from many different sources. But before examining these, it is useful to look at Verne’s life and the Extraordinary Journeys as a whole. Jules-Gabriel Verne was born in 1828, on an island in central Nantes in western France. His father had a successful law practice, and wrote occasional amateur verses. His mother’s maiden name was Allotte de la Fule, derived from a Scottish Allott who had emigrated in the fifteenth