Visual Culture and Arctic Voyages

Uncovering a wealth of archival information, Eavan O'Dochartaigh gives fresh and surprising insight into the Victorian image of the Arctic.

Eavan O'Dochartaigh (Author)

9781108994897, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 September 2024

294 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.397 kg

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.

1. 'On the Spot:' Scientific and personal visual records (1848-1854)
2. 'Breathing Time:' On-Board production of illustrated periodicals (1850-1854)
3. 'These Dread Shores:' Visualizing the Arctic for readers (1850-1860)
4. 'Never to be Forgotten:' Presenting the Arctic panorama (1850)
5. 'Power and Truth:' The authority of lithography (1850-1855)
6. Conclusion: Resonances.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]