Both fictional and non-fictional accounts of the Arctic have long been a major source of powerful images of the region, and have thus had a crucial part to play in the history of human activities there. This volume provides a...
moreBoth fictional and non-fictional accounts of the Arctic have long been a major source of powerful images of the region, and have thus had a crucial part to play in the history of human activities there. This volume provides a wide-reaching investigation into the discourses involved in such accounts, above all into the consolidation of a discourse of 'Arcticism' (modelled on Edward Said's concept of 'Orientalism'), but also into the many intersecting discourses of imperialism, nationalism, masculinity, modernity, geography, science, race, ecology, indigeneity, aesthetics, etc. Perspectives originating from inside and outside the Arctic, along with hybrid positions, are examined, with special attention being given to the textual genres, narratives and figures which they mobilize, together with to the close relationship between the Arctic as an unknown place and the literary imagination. The different chapters address a wide geographical range of texts, providing a necessary supplement to most previous work in the field, and also address the wide variety of genres which flourish under the aegis of Arctic discourse, ranging from exploration accounts, travel-writing, political texts and journalism through diaries and historical documents to novels and novelizations, and including also other media, such as music and opera.
REVIEWS
“Arctic Discourses is recommended—even required—for those studying polar literature and for libraries with collections in northern studies. For fans of explorers’ accounts and other forms of arctic literature, the book offers new perspectives on familiar stories. Perhaps above all, this work is a salutary reminder that when we write we tell a story, whether or not we mean to; and that we are revealed alongside our subject matter.”
—Shelly Sommer in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research
“Arctic Discourses is complex, confronting and thoroughly engaging. It will have wide reader appeal because, although there are many technical aspects to the analyses, they are not impenetrable and therefore don’t exclude readers unfamiliar with the disciplines. Buy a copy; you’ll not be able to put it down!”
—Dr Julia Jabour, The Polar Journal
“Pull apart explorer’s accounts, opera, and poetry for awhile instead of data. This volume of literary criticism traces how the Arctic is imagined and reimagined in literature and music, and how these representations confirm or counter prevailing images of identity, environment, and Arctic peoples.”
—Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) blog
“. . . useful from a research [point of view], and genuinely enjoyable reading.”
—Steve Himmer on goodreads.com
“Arctic Discourses makes a seminal contribution to relatively new but expanding studies that focus on the ice and cold above the Arctic Circle . . . Arctic Discourses is a pioneering and exploratory text representing an international circumpolar approach that, in contrast to previous studies, is not limited to a particular geographical area . . . a highly useful resource.”
—Caroline Schaumann, Arcadia
"… the collection is written very enjoyably. A wide range of Arctic writing from historical travel accounts to crime novels is covered, but written … in a way that the reader instinctively wishes to read all these books. … By reading this book one understands how the popular perception of the Arctic was constructed and how much this picture reflects our societies."
—Aimar Ventsel, Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics
"…it brings together for the first time a broad international and transcultural spectrum of aesthetic themes from the north polar regions and opens through its interdisciplinary approach a new perspective, not only on forms of perceiving and representing the Arctic, but also on the strategies of narrativizing, remedializing, transmitting and subverting images of the Arctic. Especially investigations into cultural history and the history of the imagination, narratological studies, and comparative research into travel writing will profit from going through the individual studies. In addition, the collection creates an important basis for further works on the history of knowledge and culture in the developing field of Arctic Studies, where literary and artistic sources have previously been neglected."
– Dorit Müller on literary studies review site IASL-online
"…Arctic Discourses is an invaluable contribution to the growing field of Arctic literary studies, and it will be of interest to a broad academic audience. While the editors and this review point out the benefits of reading the essays as a type of dialogue, chapters can be read and used as stand-alone texts by individuals and as part of undergraduate and graduate courses. Readers will find ample material and ideas with which to engage, and these essays will encourage further study and the emergence and awareness of additional perspectives and discourses on the Arctic."
– Ingrid Urberg, President of the Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada, in Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada
CONTENTS
Arctic Discourses: An Introduction ix-xxii
Part I: Discovering the Arctic
Chapter One 2-18
“Traces against time’s erosion”: The Polar Explorer between Documentation and Projection
Hanna Eglinger
Chapter Two 19-42
A Black Rectangle Labelled “Polar Night”: Imagining the Arctic after the Austro-Hungarian Expedition of 1872-1874
Johan Schimanski and Ulrike Spring
Chapter Three 43-58
Fridtjof Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland (1890): Bestseller and Scientific Report
Henning Howlid Wærp
Chapter Four 59-81
Voicing the Arctic: Knud Rasmussen and the Ambivalence of Cultural Translation
Kirsten Thisted
Chapter Five 82-105
The Culture of Nature: The View of the Arctic Environment in Knud Rasmussen’s Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition
Fredrik Chr. Brøgger
Chapter Six 106-131
City of the Sun on Ice: The Soviet (Counter-) Discourse of the Arctic
in the 1930s
Susi K. Frank
Chapter Seven 132-150
The Conquest of the Arctic: The 1937 Soviet Expedition
Tim Youngs
Part II: Imagining and Reimagining the Arctic
Chapter Eight 152-178
“I was as true and loyal as possible”: Images of the North and the Sámi in Theodor Mügge’s Travel Writing
Cathrine Theodorsen
Chapter Nine 179-198
Representations of the Arctic in Nineteenth-Century French Prose Fiction
Wendy Mercer
Chapter Ten 199-217
The Times of Men, Mysteries and Monsters: The Terror and Franklin’s Last Expedition
Maria Lindgren Leavenworth
Chapter Eleven 218-239
Arctic Crime Discourse: Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak Series
Heidi Hansson
Chapter Twelve 240-258
Telling an Arctic Tale: Arctic Discourses in Canadian Foreign Policy
Lisa Williams
Chapter Thirteen 259-282
Anerca: Representations of Inuit Poetry in Twentieth-Century Art Music
Laurel Parsons
Chapter Fourteen 283-300
From the “Hand of Franklin” to Frobisher: Opera in the Canadian North
Sherrill Grace
Chapter Fifteen 301-328
Nils-Aslak Valkeapää: Indigenous Voice and Multimedia Artist
Harald Gaski
