Traces of Franklin’s Expedition in Culture: The Shifting Fortunes of the Narrative of (Arctic) Exploration
Abstract
The paper examines the changing cultural perceptions of one of the most famous and mysterious geographic expeditions of the 19th century, John Franklin’s search for the Northwest Passage. Analyzed herein in closer detail are two novels: The Discovery of Slowliness by Sten Nadolny and Wanting by Richard Flanagan, as well as three texts by Margaret Atwood: the short story The Age of Lead from the collection Wilderness Tips, her Oxford lecture “Concerning Franklin and his Gallant Crew”, published in the volume Strange Things. The Malevolant North in Canadian Literature, and the foreword to the reissue of O. Beatie and J. Geiger’s book Frozen in Time. The Fate of the Franklin Expedition. All of these tales of Franklin’s expedition reflect the vicissitudes of human fantasies about exploring unknown and menacing spaces – not just the mythical frozen North. They are also narratives about our relationship with Nature and all the fears and hopes associated with that relationship.
Keywords:
representations of space, Arctic expeditions, Canadian literature, ecoGothic.References
Atwood Margaret (2000), Wiek ołowiu, w: M. Atwood, Dzikość serca, przeł. M. Zborowska, Poznań: Wydawnictwo ZYSK i S-ka, s. 126–140.
Atwood Margaret (2004), Concerning Franklin and his Galant Crew, w: M. Atwood, Strange Things. The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, London: Virago Press, s. 9–40.
Atwood Margret (2021), Przedmowa do Beatie Owen, Geiger John (2021), Na zawsze w lodzie. Śladami tragicznej wyprawy Johna Franklina, przeł. A. Gomola, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, s. 21–29.
Beatie Owen, Geiger John (2021), Na zawsze w lodzie. Śladami tragicznej wyprawy Johna Franklina, przeł. A. Gomola, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.
Berg Thomas Reinertsen (2018), Teatr świata. Mapy, które tworzą historię, przeł. M. Gołębiewska-Bijak, Kraków: Znak.
Bondar Alanna F. (2016), Bodies on earth: exploring sites of the Canadian ecoGothic, w: Eco-Gothic, red. A. Smith i W. Hughes, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, s. 73–85.
Coleman Ernst C. (2020), No Earth Pole. The Search of the Truth about The Franklin Expedition 1845, Gloustershire: Amberley Publishig.
Conrad Joseph (1991), Jądro ciemności, przeł. A. Zagórska, Warszawa: Sen.
Cussler Clive, Cussler Dirk (2009), Arktyczna mgła, przeł. M. Pintara, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Amber.
Fernández-Armesto Felipe (2020), Pionierzy. Powszechna historia eksploracji, przeł. A. Kunicka, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Aletheia.
Flanagan Richard (2017), Pragnienie, przeł. M. Świerkocki, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Fleming Fergus (2001), Barrow’s Boys. A Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude and Outright Lunacy. London: Granta Books.
Ganz Shoshannah (2016), Margaret Atwood’s Monsters in the Canadian ecoGothic, w: Eco-Gothic, red. A. Smith i W. Hughes, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, s. 87–102.
Heuer Christopker P. (2019), Into the White. The Renaissance Arctic and the End of the Image, New York: Zone Books.
Hill Jen (2008), White Horizon. The Arctic in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination, New York: State University of New York Press.
Ingelfield Edward A. (2014), A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin, Cambridge: University Press.
Lamb G.F. (1956), Franklin. Happy Voyager, London: Ernest Benn Limited.
Lanone Catherine (2016), Monsters on the ice and global warming: from Mary Shelley and Sir John Franklin to Margaret Atwood and Dan Simmons, w: EcoGothic, red. A. Smith i W. Hughes, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, s. 28–43.
McCannon John (2012), A History of the Arctic. Nature, Exploration and Exploitation, London: Reaktion Books.
McGoogan Ken (2002), Fatal Passage. The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin, London: Bentam Books.
Nadolny Stan (1998), Odkrywanie powolności, przeł. S. Lisiecka, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Neatby Leslie H. (1970), The Search for Franklin, Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig.
Ross Gilles W. (2019), Hunters of the Track, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Verne Juliusz (2011), Przygody kapitana Hatterasa, przeł. A. Zydorczak, Gdańsk: Instytut Marka Kamińskiego.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Articles published on the platform of Białostockie Studia Literaturoznawcze are available under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0 (CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0).
All interested parties have access to the published articles under the following conditions:
1.They must acknowledge authorship, which means crediting the author, title, source, together with the disseminated work (including the hyperlinks to the original work and doi) as well as the same license under the same conditions.
2. Derivative works can be distributed only under the same license as the original work.
The University of Białystok retains the right to the entire journal (layout, graphic design, title, cover design, logo, etc.).
The author retains the property right but confers on the University of Białystok the right to use the work.
