Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration

328 Pages·2016·12.11 MB·English

by  Adriana Craciun

WRITING ARCTIC DISASTER
How did the Victorian fixation on the disastrous John Franklin
expedition transform our understanding of the Northwest Passage
and the Arctic? Today, we still tend to see the Arctic and the
Northwest Passage through nineteenth-century perspectives, which
focused on the discoveries of individual explorers, their illustrated
books,visualculture,imperialambitions,andhigh-profiledisasters.
However,thefartherbackonelooks,themorestrikingthedifferences
appear in how Arctic exploration was envisioned. Writing Arctic
Disaster uncovers a wide range of exploration cultures: from the
manuscripts of secretive corporations like the Hudson’s Bay
Company,tothenationalistAdmiraltyanditsinnovativeillustrated
books, to the searches for and exhibits of disaster relics in the
Victorian era. This innovative study reveals the dangerous after-life
ofthisVictorianconflationofexplorationanddisaster,inthegeopo-
litical significance accruing around the 2014 discovery of Franklin’s
shipErebusintheNorthwestPassage.
AdrianaCraciunisPresidentialChairattheUniversityofCalifornia,
Riverside. Her books include Fatal Women of Romanticism
(Cambridge, 2003), British Women Writers and the French
Revolution: Citizens of the World (2005), The Material Cultures of
Enlightenment Arts and Sciences (with Simon Schaffer, forthcoming
in2016),andseveralcollectionsandeditions.
cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature
and culture
Generaleditor
GillianBeer,UniversityofCambridge
Editorialboard
IsobelArmstrong,Birkbeck,UniversityofLondon
KateFlint,UniversityofSouthernCalifornia
CatherineGallagher,UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley
D.A.Miller,UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley
J.HillisMiller,UniversityofCalifornia,Irvine
DanielPick,Birkbeck,UniversityofLondon
MaryPoovey,NewYorkUniversity
SallyShuttleworth,UniversityofOxford
HerbertTucker,UniversityofVirginia
Nineteenth-century British literature and culture have been rich fields for
interdisciplinary studies. Since the turn of the twentieth century, scholars and
critics have tracked the intersections and tensions between Victorian literature
and the visual arts, politics, social organization, economic life, technical
innovations,scientificthought–inshort,cultureinitsbroadestsense.Inrecent
years, theoretical challenges and historiographical shifts have unsettled the
assumptionsofpreviousscholarlysynthesisandcalledintoquestionthetermsof
olderdebates.Whereasthetendencyinmuchpastliterarycriticalinterpretation
was to use the metaphor of culture as ‘background’, feminist, Foucauldian, and
otheranalyseshaveemployedmoredynamicmodelsthatraisequestionsofpower
andofcirculation.Suchdevelopmentshavereanimatedthefield.Thisseriesaims
toaccommodateandpromotethemostinterestingworkbeingundertakenonthe
frontiersofthefieldofnineteenth-centuryliterarystudies:workwhichintersects
fruitfullywithotherfieldsofstudysuchashistory,orliterarytheory,orthehistory
ofscience.Comparativeaswellasinterdisciplinaryapproachesarewelcomed.
Acompletelistoftitlespublishedwillbefoundattheendofthebook.
WRITING ARCTIC DISASTER
Authorship and Exploration
ADRIANA CRACIUN
UniversityPrintingHouse,Cambridgecb28bs,UnitedKingdom
CambridgeUniversityPressispartoftheUniversityofCambridge.
ItfurtherstheUniversity’smissionbydisseminatingknowledgeinthepursuitof
education,learningandresearchatthehighestinternationallevelsofexcellence.
www.cambridge.org
Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781107125544
©AdrianaCraciun2016
Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception
andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements,
noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten
permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress.
Firstpublished2016
PrintedintheUnitedKingdombyTJInternationalLtd.PadstowCornwall
AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
isbn978-1-107-12554-4Hardback
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URLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication,
anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain,
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includeappropriateacknowledgementsinasubsequentedition.
for River,
my favorite author and explorer
le savoir n’est pas fait pour comprendre, il est fait pour
trancher.
knowledgeisnotmadeforunderstanding,itismade
forcutting.
MichelFoucault
myhomeisthesea,disasterfliesuponme
WillOldham
Contents
Listofillustrations pageviii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction:NorthwestPassagesandExplorationCultures 1
1 ArcticArchives:VictorianRelics,Sites,Collections 33
2 Exploration,Publication,andInscriptionintheAgeof
Murray 82
3 BuildingUponDisaster:AdventurersinHudsonBay 124
4 TheFamousMarkofOurDiscovery:SocialAuthorship
andArcticInscriptions 170
5 BrokenLandsandLostRelics:TheVictorianRediscovery
oftheEarlyModernArctic 200
Epilogue:FranklinFoundandLost 224
Notes 233
Bibliography 274
Index 303
vii
Illustrations
1.0 FromMicheldeCerteau,Heterologies:DiscourseontheOther. page19
Intro.WladGodzich.Trans.BrianMassumi.Minneapolis:
UniversityofMinnesotaPress,1986.146.Reproducedby
permissionofMinnesotaUniversityPress.
1.1 “TheFranklinRelics,”IllustratedLondonNews(Nov.4,1854)433. 40
©IllustratedLondonNewsLtd/MaryEvansPictureLibrary.
1.2 WalterMay,“FranklinRelicsBroughtbyDr.Rae,”PlateXIV, 41
lithographfromASeriesofFourteenSketches,madeduringthe
voyageupWellingtonChannelinsearchofSirJ.Franklin(London,
1855).©TheBritishLibraryBoard(1781.a.6).
1.3 TradecardinWrightson’sNewTriennialDirectoryofBirmingham 42
(1818).TheBodleianLibrary,UniversityofOxford.G.A.Warw.
8°.371,p.110–11.
1.4 GeorgeMcDougall,“CrystalPalace,WinterQuarters,1853–54.” 42
EdwardBelcher,TheLastoftheArcticVoyages.Vol.2.London:
LovellReeve,1855.CourtesyoftheNationalOceanicand
AtmosphericAdministrationLibrary.
1.5 “ArcticCollection.”IllustratedLondonNews(July14,1855). 46
©IllustratedLondonNewsLtd/MaryEvansPictureLibrary.
1.6 “RelicsoftheFranklinExpedition,”IllustratedLondonNews(Oct. 48
15,1859)367.©IllustratedLondonNewsLtd/MaryEvansPicture
Library.
1.7 JohnCheyne,Case1,FourteenStereoscopicSlidesoftheFranklin 52
Relics(London,1860).ScottPolarResearchInstitute,Universityof
Cambridge,withpermission.
1.8 JohnCheyne,Case4,FourteenStereoscopicSlidesoftheFranklin 53
Relics(London,1860).ScottPolarResearchInstitute,Universityof
Cambridge,withpermission.
1.9 “TracesoftheFranklinExpedition.”IllustratedLondonNews 56
(Oct.4,1851)409.©IllustratedLondonNewsLtd/MaryEvans
PictureLibrary.
1.10 ElishaKentKane,“ThegravesofthreeofFranklin’screwmenon 59
BeecheyIsland.”TheU.S.GrinnellExpedition.NewYork:Harper,
1854.LindaHallLibraryofScience,Engineering&Technology.
viii