White Horizon: The Arctic in the Nineteenth-Century British ImaginationState University of New York Press, 2009 M01 8 - 246 pages Bridging historical and literary studies, White Horizon explores the importance of the Arctic to British understandings of masculine identity, the nation, and the rapidly expanding British Empire in the nineteenth century. Well before Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, polar space had come to represent the limit of both empire and human experience. Using a variety of texts, from explorers' accounts to boys' adventure fiction, as well as provocative and fresh readings of the works of Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontė, Charles Dickens, and Wilkie Collins, Jen H ill illustrates the function of Arctic space in the nineteenth-century British social imagination, arguing that the desolate north was imagined as a "pure" space, a conveniently blank page on which to write narratives of Arctic exploration that both furthered and critiqued British imperialism. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Robert Southeys Life of Nelson and John Franklins Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea | 29 |
The Arctic of Mary Shelley and Eleanor Anne Porden | 53 |
Arctic Spaces in Jane Eyre | 89 |
5 Arctic Highlanders and Englishmen Dickens Cannibalism and Sensation | 113 |
R M Ballantynes Arctic Adventures | 151 |
Notes | 175 |
| 231 | |
Other editions - View all
White Horizon: The Arctic in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination Jen Hill Limited preview - 2009 |
White Horizon: The Arctic in the Nineteenth-century British Imagination Jen Hill No preview available - 2008 |
White Horizon: The Arctic in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination Jen Hill No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
adventure novels Arctic Expeditions Arctic exploration Arctic narrative Arctic space assertions Ballantyne Ballantyne's blank boys Britain British masculinity Britons Brontė Cambridge University Press cannibalism century Charles Dickens Conrad Coral Island critique cultural Dickens's domestic Eleanor Anne Porden empire encounter England English experience exploration accounts female fiction Francis Spufford Frankenstein Franklin expedition Frozen Deep Gender genre geography heroic masculinity homosocial Household Words identifies imagination imperial masculinity imperial project Inuit Jane Eyre Jane's John Franklin Joseph Conrad Journey landscape literal London mapping Mary Shelley melodrama national character national identity national masculinity native nature Nelson nineteenth Nineteenth-Century North Pole Northwest Passage Nugent numbers Oxford participation physical plot poem polar exploration Polar Sea political Porden R. M. Ballantyne racial Rae's readers reveals Romantic Romanticism Routledge sailors sensation novel Shelley ship Southey Southey's tion Victor's Victorian voyage Walton Wardour Wilkie Collins women writing York