Writing Arctic disaster : authorship and exploration / Adriana Craciun.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Craciun, Adriana, 1967- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 104.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 104

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

Explorers in literature.

Adventure and adventurers in literature.

Disasters in literature.

Arctic regions--In literature.

Arctic regions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 306 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How did the Victorian fixation on the disastrous John Franklin expedition transform our understanding of the Northwest Passage and the Arctic? Today we still tend to see the Arctic and the Northwest Passage through nineteenth-century perspectives, which focused on the discoveries of individual explorers, their illustrated books, visual culture, imperial ambitions, and high-profile disasters. However, the farther back one looks, the more striking the differences appear in how Arctic exploration was envisioned. Writing Arctic Disaster uncovers a wide range of exploration cultures: from the manuscripts of secretive corporations like the Hudson's Bay Company, to the nationalist Admiralty and its innovative illustrated books, to the searches for and exhibits of disaster relics in the Victorian era. This innovative study reveals the dangerous afterlife of this Victorian conflation of exploration and disaster, in the geopolitical significance accruing around the 2014 discovery of Franklin's ship Erebus in the Northwest Passage.

Contents:

Cover; Half-title page; Series page; Title page; Copyright page; Dedication; Epigraph; Contents; Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Northwest Passages and Exploration Cultures; Chapter 1 Arctic Archives: Victorian Relics, Sites, Collections; Chapter 2 Exploration, Publication, and Inscription in the Age of Murray; Chapter 3 Building Upon Disaster: Adventurers in Hudson Bay; Chapter 4 The Famous Mark of Our Discovery: Social Authorship and Arctic Inscriptions; Chapter 5 Broken Lands and Lost Relics: The Victorian Rediscovery of the Early Modern Arctic

Epilogue: Franklin Found and LostNotes; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 08 Mar 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-53775-7

1-316-54076-6

1-316-54162-2

1-316-54119-3

1-316-54334-X

1-316-41079-X