“A strange unearthly climate”: James Hogg’s tale of the Arctic wild
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
The Arctic was one of the last “wild” landscapes left in the early nineteenth century. It remained an inhospitable environment, largely resisting human attempts at conquest and cultivation. The chapter is an examination of the Scottish writer James Hogg’s novella The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon (1837), a story modelled loosely on Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe . But whereas Crusoe manages to utilize natural resources and prosper from them, Hogg’s story about a castaway is a dark satire of nature pushing back. Hogg posits the Arctic as a sublime but also unwieldy world that frustrates nineteenth-century optimism that northern latitudes could be conquered and brought under human control. The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon is ultimately a story about the European subject being wrenched from itself in the encounter with the “wild.”
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Wild Romanticism : Routledge Historical Resources Programme. Romanticism |
Editors | Markus Poetzsch, Cassandra Falke |
Number of pages | 16 |
Publisher | Routledge |
Publication date | 2021 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780367496722 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780367496746 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Series | Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media |
---|
Bibliographical note
Digital republication of a book chapter from Wild Romanticism. The chapter is reproduced on the platform Routledge Historical Resources Programme: Romanticism, edited by Duncan Wu, Jane Moore, and John Strachan. The resource is available to research libraries and other subscribers.
ID: 282601297