Storied Waves: Maritime Connections and Subaltern Knowledge in Arctic and Mediterranean Literary Contact Zones

• Main Author: Mackenthun, Gesa
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Springer International Publishing 2023
• Subjects: Arctic; Merle
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91275-8_2; https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-91275-8_2

Abstract Woven around Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative , Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow , and Merle Kröger’s Havarie ( Collision ), this chapter discusses the concurrence between the search for knowledge and the topic of human disposability in texts and events relating to the contact zones of the Arctic and the Mediterranean. It views them as combining macrogeographical considerations of oceanic contact with reflections on the micro-level of human experience, resonating with Edward Said’s and Kirsten Gruesz’s pleas for investigating “overlapping geographies,” “intertwined histories,” and maritime geopolitical regions as “engines” of empire. Straddling the period between the beginning of globalization and the recent past, these literary texts are harnessed to critical reflections on the complexity of these maritime, social, and epistemic connections and contact zones beyond the landed history of nations and mainlands.