{"title":"“A romance based on information”: The curious case of Clements Markham’s Franklin Expedition novel","authors":"Allegra Rosenberg","doi":"10.1017/s0032247424000081","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Sir Clements Markham (1830-1916), secretary of the Royal Geographical Society for many decades, is best known for his role in shaping the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and especially the career of his protege Robert Falcon Scott. His unpublished work of Franklin Expedition fiction, a 350-page handwritten manuscript held in the collection of the RGS, is an understudied artefact which has much to say about Markham’s life, work, and ideology. A work of fact-based history, yet also a fantasy on themes of chivalry, his 1899 novel <span>James Fitzjames…,</span> while occasionally mined for biographical information by scholars of the 19th-century Arctic, has never been fully evaluated on its own terms. An initial read reveals various preoccupations: Christian spirituality; the male body in extremis; loyalty to the imperial hierarchy; and a deep interest in establishing James Fitzjames as a heroic figure for posterity. In this paper, I aim to uncover various meanings embedded in this romance, place it into the ongoing literary afterlife of the Franklin Expedition, and demonstrate some of the insights it can offer regarding Markham’s role as a vital figure in the history of polar exploration.</p>","PeriodicalId":49685,"journal":{"name":"Polar Record","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Polar Record","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0032247424000081","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Sir Clements Markham (1830-1916), secretary of the Royal Geographical Society for many decades, is best known for his role in shaping the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and especially the career of his protege Robert Falcon Scott. His unpublished work of Franklin Expedition fiction, a 350-page handwritten manuscript held in the collection of the RGS, is an understudied artefact which has much to say about Markham’s life, work, and ideology. A work of fact-based history, yet also a fantasy on themes of chivalry, his 1899 novel James Fitzjames…, while occasionally mined for biographical information by scholars of the 19th-century Arctic, has never been fully evaluated on its own terms. An initial read reveals various preoccupations: Christian spirituality; the male body in extremis; loyalty to the imperial hierarchy; and a deep interest in establishing James Fitzjames as a heroic figure for posterity. In this paper, I aim to uncover various meanings embedded in this romance, place it into the ongoing literary afterlife of the Franklin Expedition, and demonstrate some of the insights it can offer regarding Markham’s role as a vital figure in the history of polar exploration.
期刊介绍：
Polar Record is an international, peer-reviewed scholarly periodical publishing results from a wide range of polar research areas. The journal covers original primary research papers in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, and polar technology, as well as papers concerning current political, economic, legal, and environmental issues in the Arctic or Antarctic. Polar Record endeavours to provide rapid publication, normally within nine months of initial submission.
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