DOCTORAL THESIS Antarctica in children’s literature Moriarty, Sinéad Award date: 2018 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 Antarctica in Children’s Literature by Sinéad Moriarty BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of English and Creative Writing University of Roehampton 2018 ABSTRACT For over a century, British authors have been writing about the Antarctic for child audiences, and yet Antarctic literature for children has never been considered as a unique body of work or given significant critical attention. This thesis represents the first in-depth examination of Antarctic literature for children written or published in Britain. Representations of the Antarctic hold particular relevance within the British context, as Britain retains significant territorial claims to Antarctic territories and British explorers have played a key role in Antarctic history. This thesis expands upon existing work focusing on literature for adults about the Antarctic including Francis Spufford’s 1996 I May be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination and Elizabeth Leane’s 2012 Antarctica in Fiction. Over a century of writing about the continent for children is interrogated, covering a period between 1895 and 2017. The thesis identifies, and provides a detailed examination of, the six dominant genres of literature about the Antarctic written for children. These genres are: whaling literature, “Heroic Era” exploration literature, subversive exploration literature, adventure literature, fantasy literature, and animal stories. This thesis focuses on representations of landscape within Antarctic literature for children, and draws on the work of landscape theorists and cultural geographers including Yi Fu Tuan, Roderick Nash, Greg Garrard and William Cronon to examine how authors for children have imagined the Antarctic as a wilderness. The thesis draws on, and adds to, existing examinations of landscape within children’s literature, specifically Jane Suzanne Carroll’s 2011 Landscape in Children’s Literature. The thesis utilises Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of chronotopes to explore how time-space is constructed within Antarctic literature for children and the impact of time upon child and adult protagonists within the children’s texts. Finally, the thesis examines representations of death and survival in Antarctic literature for children. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION AND THE “HEROIC ERA” 11 SPACE AND THE IDEA OF WILDERNESS 16 TIME AND ANTARCTIC CHRONOTOPES 25 DEATH 28 CHAPTER OVERVIEW 32 CHAPTER ONE: ANTARCTIC WHALING LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN 39 COMMODIFYING NATURE 43 HORROR AND AWE 52 THE ANTARCTIC AS CORNUCOPIA 57 WHALING TEXTS AS BILDUNGSROMAN 62 CONCLUSION 71 CHAPTER TWO: ROBERT F. SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION 75 UNCRITICAL RETELLINGS 78 ROBERT SCOTT AND PETER PAN 88 TIME IN “HEROIC ERA” NARRATIVES 95 HEROISM AND MASCULINITY 103 THE DEATH OF THE HERO 110 CONCLUSION 119 CHAPTER THREE: ERNEST SHACKLETON AND HEROIC SURVIVAL 123 SHACKLETON AS AUTHOR 130 THE ENDURANCE AS SIEGE NARRATIVE 136 THE CONSUMPTION OF THE SHIP 144 DEATH AND SURVIVAL 152 THE “HEROIC ERA” CHRONOTOPE IN THE ENDURANCE NARRATIVES 156 CONCLUSION 160 CHAPTER FOUR: “HEROIC ERA” SUBVERSIONS AND REVISIONS 164 SUBVERTING ANTARCTIC CHRONOTOPES 166 SUBVERTING THE HERO 179 RETHINKING SCOTT AND SHACKLETON 190 CONCLUSION 195 CHAPTER FIVE: UNCANNY ADVENTURES 197 THE UNCANNY FIGURE, THE GHOST 203 THE UNCANNY FIGURE, FIGURES OF MADNESS 209 UNCANNY PLACES, CHTHONIC SPACES, AND SHIPWRECKS 215 CHTHONIC TREASURES 233 TIME AND TRANSFORMATION IN ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE NARRATIVES 237 CONCLUSION 241 CHAPTER SIX: PICTURING PENGUINS 246 PENGUINS AND THE PICTUREBOOK FORMAT 249 TIME IN PENGUIN PICTUREBOOKS 254 PERCEPTUAL SCALING IN PENGUIN PICTUREBOOKS 259 ALTERNATIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER 269 SUBVERTING THE PENGUIN STORY GENRE 273 CONCLUSION 284 CONCLUSION 287 KEY FINDINGS AND CRITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS 287 FURTHER AREAS OF STUDY 294 REFERENCES 300 APPENDICES 322 LIST OF IMAGES/FIGURES Figure 1: Man-hauling in Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. From Dowdeswell, Dowdeswell & Seddon (2012), Scott of the Antarctic, p.17. Figure 2: Man-hauling image from Philip Sauvain’s (1993) Robert Scott in the Antarctic p.22. Figure 3: Contrasting the safe interior of the ship with the wild Antarctic outside in William Grill’s, Shackleton's Journey, 2014, p.28. Figure 4: Photograph of Tom Crean, taken by Endurance expedition photographer Frank Hurley. Crean is holding some of the puppies born during the expedition. © Public domain. Retrieved from http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/biography/crean_ thomas.php Figure 5: Map image which appears in the endpapers of Christine Butterworth’s, Shackleton the Survivor, 2001. Figure 6: Alternative map images of the Antarctic from William Grill’s, Shackleton's Journey, 2014, pp.17-18. Figure 7: 'A Very Gallant Gentleman' by John Charles Dollman. © Public domain. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Oates Figure 8, 9 & 10: Images of animal protagonists from Cowcher's Antarctica (1990), n.pag. Figure 11: Contracted images of penguin protagonist and egg from Martin Jenkins, The Emperor's Egg, pp12-13. Figure 12: Martin Jenkins, The Emperor's Egg, cover image. Figure 13: Animal ‘homeplaces’ in the Antarctic in Karma Wilson’s, Where is Home, Little Pip?, illustrated by Jane Chapman, n.pag Figure 14: Penguin communities in Helen Cowcher’s, Antarctica, n.pag. Figure 15: Final image from Helen Cowcher’s, Antarctica, n.pag. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll and Dr Kate Teltscher, both of whom have provided invaluable guidance, encouragement, and enthusiasm throughout the course of this project. They have generously shared their insights and experience with me and I am sincerely grateful. I would also like to thank the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton who have fostered a welcoming and supportive environment. I owe considerable thanks and many cups of tea to the other members of the postgraduate research community at Roehampton. It has been a great pleasure to learn with, and from, all of the other researchers, and my project has benefitted immeasurably from their input. Special thanks go to Erica Gillingham, Anne Malewski, Sarah Pyke, and Emily Mercer for the proofreading and encouragement; and also to friends and family outside Roehampton, in particular, Siobhán Moriarty, Catherine Glasheen, Lillian Farrell, and Seán Lynam. This project has taken a considerable length of time and I could not have completed it without your friendship and advice. I am sincerely grateful to Marian and Brendan Moriarty for their patience with my unending studies, and for many other things besides. Finally, I wish to thank Conor Brennan, for his remarkable good humour and positivity, for standing beside me in moments of joy and despair, and for believing in me. Introduction In November 1977, Silvia Morella de Palma was airlifted to the Argentinian Esperanza base on the Antarctic Peninsula. She was seven months pregnant. In January 1978 de Palma gave birth to a baby boy, Emilio Marcos Palma, the first baby born on the Antarctic continent. Emilio was the first, but not the last, child to be born in the Antarctic. To date, eight children have been born at Esperanza base, while three have been born at Chilean Antarctic bases (Walker, 2013, p.271). In an interview given in 2002, Emilio explained that his family stayed in Antarctica for only a brief period after his birth, as there were worries that the “sterile” environment would inhibit the normal development of antibodies (“An Argentine: Adam of the White Continent”, 2002). However, other children have made a more permanent home in the continent. Unlike most research stations in the Antarctic, which explicitly forbid children under the age of eighteen, both the Argentinian and Chilean bases continue to allow child residents, primarily the offspring of army or air force officials operating at the bases. In 2013 journalists from the BBC travelled to the Chilean Antarctic base, Villa Las Estrellas, to interview a couple who were then living on the base with their infant son, Fernando. Towards the end of the video interview, parents Carolina and Fernando Sr. concede that, “Everyone asks us, why are you so mean as to take your child to the Antarctic?” (“Bringing up baby in Antarctica”, 2013). Perhaps one reason the family is asked this pointed question so often is because, for hundreds of years, the Antarctic has been positioned as a hostile and deadly space; a landscape where men could complete astonishing acts of heroism and endurance, but a place utterly unsuitable for children.