Visual Culture and Arctic Voyages

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.

• Provides a new model for interdisciplinary use of documentary art and archives, examining little-known material and drawing attention to the importance of collections for research
• Offers thorough yet accessible readings of archival material, giving valuable insight not only for academic readers across multiple disciplines but also for interested non-academic readers
• Brings together visual, literary, and geographical ways of seeing the historical Arctic, providing a broader historical picture of Arctic exploration and suggesting new avenues for further research
• This book is also available as Open Access