The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature
A body of imaginative literature on the contemporary Antarctic has emerged in the last thirty years, an evolution which has definitively updated the aesthetics of literature about the continent beyond the classic explorer narrative personified in works by Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, Roal...
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ftangliruskinfig:oai:figshare.com:article/23762958 2023-11-12T04:06:22+01:00 The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature Jean McNeil 2023-08-30T16:24:39Z https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/The_empir_e_ical_sublime_representations_of_the_sublime_in_three_works_of_contemporary_Antarctic_literature/23762958 unknown 10779/aru.23762958.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/The_empir_e_ical_sublime_representations_of_the_sublime_in_three_works_of_contemporary_Antarctic_literature/23762958 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Antarctica Antarctic literature polar literature the sublime the empirical sublime science writing Text Thesis 2023 ftangliruskinfig 2023-10-13T12:12:26Z A body of imaginative literature on the contemporary Antarctic has emerged in the last thirty years, an evolution which has definitively updated the aesthetics of literature about the continent beyond the classic explorer narrative personified in works by Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, and others. Since the late 1980s, access to the continent by non-explorers and non-scientists, including artists and writers, has accelerated, and with it the corpus of contemporary imaginative writing about the Antarctic has grown. I examine the strategies of representation I employ in three published works on the Antarctic, a novel, a collection of poetry and a memoir, all of which were inspired by my year as writerin- residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and by six years of subsequent travels to both the Arctic and the Southern Ocean with BAS. The Antarctic is shown to have a complex and contradictory character: ephemeral yet dimensional, physical and metaphysical. I explore how my literary work makes use of familiar tropes of the sublime but updates them through exposure to ‘scientific’ cultures and the specific lexicon of the modern Antarctic, ultimately employing what I and the philosopher Emily Brady term the empirical sublime. I analyse my work’s exploration of the evolving relationship in philosophy between climate change, the sublime and new conceptions of humans’ relationship to the planet such as the Anthropocene and hyperobjects. A discussion of the linguistic and representation strategies of my work elicits an argument that climate change has introduced a new iteration of the sublime, which Brady has termed ‘environmental sublime’. Thesis Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica Arctic British Antarctic Survey Climate change Southern Ocean Anglia Ruskin University: Figshare Arctic Antarctic Southern Ocean The Antarctic Shackleton |
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Anglia Ruskin University: Figshare |
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Antarctica Antarctic literature polar literature the sublime the empirical sublime science writing |
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Antarctica Antarctic literature polar literature the sublime the empirical sublime science writing Jean McNeil The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature |
topic_facet |
Antarctica Antarctic literature polar literature the sublime the empirical sublime science writing |
description |
A body of imaginative literature on the contemporary Antarctic has emerged in the last thirty years, an evolution which has definitively updated the aesthetics of literature about the continent beyond the classic explorer narrative personified in works by Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, and others. Since the late 1980s, access to the continent by non-explorers and non-scientists, including artists and writers, has accelerated, and with it the corpus of contemporary imaginative writing about the Antarctic has grown. I examine the strategies of representation I employ in three published works on the Antarctic, a novel, a collection of poetry and a memoir, all of which were inspired by my year as writerin- residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and by six years of subsequent travels to both the Arctic and the Southern Ocean with BAS. The Antarctic is shown to have a complex and contradictory character: ephemeral yet dimensional, physical and metaphysical. I explore how my literary work makes use of familiar tropes of the sublime but updates them through exposure to ‘scientific’ cultures and the specific lexicon of the modern Antarctic, ultimately employing what I and the philosopher Emily Brady term the empirical sublime. I analyse my work’s exploration of the evolving relationship in philosophy between climate change, the sublime and new conceptions of humans’ relationship to the planet such as the Anthropocene and hyperobjects. A discussion of the linguistic and representation strategies of my work elicits an argument that climate change has introduced a new iteration of the sublime, which Brady has termed ‘environmental sublime’. |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Jean McNeil |
author_facet |
Jean McNeil |
author_sort |
Jean McNeil |
title |
The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature |
title_short |
The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature |
title_full |
The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature |
title_fullStr |
The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature |
title_full_unstemmed |
The empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary Antarctic literature |
title_sort |
empir(e)ical sublime: representations of the sublime in three works of contemporary antarctic literature |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/The_empir_e_ical_sublime_representations_of_the_sublime_in_three_works_of_contemporary_Antarctic_literature/23762958 |
geographic |
Arctic Antarctic Southern Ocean The Antarctic Shackleton |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Antarctic Southern Ocean The Antarctic Shackleton |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica Arctic British Antarctic Survey Climate change Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica Arctic British Antarctic Survey Climate change Southern Ocean |
op_relation |
10779/aru.23762958.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/The_empir_e_ical_sublime_representations_of_the_sublime_in_three_works_of_contemporary_Antarctic_literature/23762958 |
op_rights |
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
_version_ |
1782327463478558720 |