The Sea

Refusing to swear allegiance to the regime of Emperor Louis Napoleon, the great French naturalist Jules Michelet (1798�1874) turned his attention to a study of the natural world, which he published in several volumes. La Mer (The Sea), one of the best of these, is part prose poem, travelogue, and autobiography, which influenced such notables as Jules Verne and was the subject of studies by Roland Barthes and others.