Visual Culture and Arctic Voyages (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781108834339)

In the mid-nineteenth century, thirty-six expeditions set out for the Northwest Passage in search of Sir John Franklin's missing expedition. The array of visual and textual material produced on these voyages was to have a profound impact on the idea of the Arctic in the Victorian imaginary. Eavan O'Dochartaigh closely examines neglected archival sources to show how pictures created in the Arctic fed into a metropolitan view transmitted through engravings, lithographs, and panoramas. Although the metropolitan Arctic revolved around a fulcrum of heroism, terror and the sublime, the visual culture of the ship reveals a more complicated narrative that included cross-dressing, theatricals, dressmaking, and dances with local communities. O'Dochartaigh's investigation into the nature of the on-board visual culture of the nineteenth-century Arctic presents a compelling challenge to the 'man-versus-nature' trope that still reverberates in polar imaginaries today. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Author: Eavan O'Dochartaigh
ISBN-10: 1108834337
ISBN-13: 9781108834339
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/10/2022
Pages: 228
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d