{"id":203,"date":"2018-09-16T14:56:30","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T12:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.nord.no\/frankenreads\/?p=203"},"modified":"2021-12-23T12:01:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T11:01:36","slug":"two-carcasses-passing-in-the-ice-phipps-and-frankenstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2018\/09\/16\/two-carcasses-passing-in-the-ice-phipps-and-frankenstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Carcasses Passing in the Ice: Phipps and Frankenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Andrew McKendry<\/a>, Nord University<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Like many such expeditions, Robert Walton\u2019s quest for the North Pole becomes most interesting when it gets derailed; fortunately for us, Walton is waylaid by the exhausted Victor Frankenstein, whose tale of horror and woe\u2014an interruption to the anticipated account of arctic exploration\u2014proves one of the most haunting and enduring narratives of English literature. Stopping to rescue half-crazed necromancers was, of course, never part of the original itinerary; this fateful encounter emerges from the arctic landscape itself, when the ship becomes trapped in the surrounding floe.<\/p>\n

Last\u00a0Monday (July 31st), we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the\u00a0sea room\u00a0in which she floated. Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were compassed round by a very thick fog. We accordingly lay to, hoping that some change would take place in the atmosphere and weather. About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow\u00a0watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention, and\u00a0diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile:\u00a0a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge, and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller with our telescopes, until\u00a0he was lost\u00a0among the distant inequalities of the ice. (Shelley 1818, I.21-22)<\/p>\n

The beginning of Walton\u2019s story thus turns out to be the foundation for another beginning. And if we accept Shelley\u2019s proposition (from her introduction to the 1831 edition) that every beginning \u201cmust be linked to something that went before\u201d (9), then we must seek the beginning before even this beginning\u2014the \u201csomething that went before\u201d Walton\u2019s voyage. This search is an element of the Frankenreads online exhibition that we have been developing here at Nord University, and I myself have been productively waylaid by an earlier account of artic exploration: the Honourable Constantine John Phipps\u2019 A Voyage Towards the North Pole Undertaken By His Majesty\u2019s Command<\/em>. In the opening pages of Frankenstein<\/em>, Walton ascribes his obsession with the north to the accounts of arctic travel in his uncle\u2019s library, and Phipps\u2019 Voyage<\/em>, first published in 1774, would have been one of the most current such narratives when (by his own dating) he was a book-devouring boy. The Voyage<\/em> opens, in fact, with a survey of earlier artic voyages\u2014the very thing that fed Walton\u2019s youthful reveries (Shelley 1818, I.5).<\/p>\n

At first glance, Phipps\u2019 account hardly seems like the kind of material that could inspire a poetically-inclined adventurer like Walton, let alone Shelley; the disciplined Phipps focuses his attention predominantly on climatic measurements and geographic coordinates. The attendant illustrations of the arctic orography (such as the one above) do present the forms and scale that would engender the sublimity of later depictions, but the perspective and presentation\u2014abstracted from the landscape and reproduced from various positions\u2014are less conducive to the awe and terror associated with the sublime. Yet at the heart of the journal we find a scene that looks strangely familiar:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Compassed round with ice, the two ships\u2014HMS Carcass and HMS Racehorse\u2014were nearly crushed when the floe tightened. The image of the ships immured in the ice became somewhat iconic in the ensuing decades, appearing (sometimes with variations) throughout a number of publications, such as John Payne\u2019s 1791 Universal Geography<\/em>. Though only a lexicographic accident (the word \u201ccarcass\u201d also meaning an incendiary shell), it is hard not to hear echoes of Frankenstein<\/em> in lines like \u201cthe Carcass moved, and made fast to the same field with us\u201d (Phipps 60). Stranded for more than ten days, the Carcass was ultimately recovered in one piece; this was the end of the journey for Phipps, but was it perhaps a beginning for Shelley?<\/p>\n

This is a mystery we will have to pursue later. Keep an eye out for our exhibition, which will be going live next month!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mulgrave, Constantine John Phipps, Baron, A Voyage Towards the North Pole: Undertaken by His Majesty\u2019s Command, 1773.\u00a0<\/em><\/a>\u00a0London: J. Nourse, 1774.<\/p>\n

Shelley, Mary.\u00a0Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus<\/em>. Three volumes. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818.<\/p>\n

Shelley, Mary,\u00a0Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.\u00a0<\/em>London: Colburn and Bentley, 1831.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Andrew McKendry, Nord University Like many such expeditions, Robert Walton\u2019s quest for the North Pole becomes most interesting when it gets derailed; fortunately for us, Walton is waylaid by the exhausted Victor Frankenstein, whose tale of horror and woe\u2014an interruption to the anticipated account of arctic exploration\u2014proves one of the most haunting and enduring … Continue reading Two Carcasses Passing in the Ice: Phipps and Frankenstein<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"coauthors":[11],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-entries"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/padC0F-3h","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":406,"url":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2018\/10\/23\/visible-objects-library-and-online-exhibitions\/","url_meta":{"origin":203,"position":0},"title":"Visible Objects: Library and Online Exhibitions","author":"Jessica","date":"23\/10\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This week marks the opening of our two exciting new Frankenstein exhibitions. Ice and Fire: Frankenstein and the Arctic, curated by Jamie Callison and Andrew McKendry with the support of the Nord University Library, focuses attention on Robert Walton\u2019s doomed expedition to the Far North, with emphasis on details from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukategorisert"","block_context":{"text":"Ukategorisert","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/category\/ukategorisert\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2018\/10\/28\/visible-objects-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":203,"position":1},"title":"Visible Objects, Part 2","author":"Jessica","date":"28\/10\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Nord University library exhibition \"Frankenversions: 200 Years of Adapting Frankenstein\" has been underway for the last week, and I'm delighted to say that we have had a great deal of visits to our display. It's become a bit of a local attraction, in fact, and several classes have made\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukategorisert"","block_context":{"text":"Ukategorisert","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/category\/ukategorisert\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2018\/10\/PART_1540659489741.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2018\/10\/PART_1540659489741.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2018\/10\/PART_1540659489741.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":451,"url":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2018\/10\/30\/continual-food-for-discovery-and-wonder\/","url_meta":{"origin":203,"position":2},"title":"“Continual food for discovery and wonder”","author":"Jessica","date":"30\/10\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"As you prepare for tomorrow's read-a-thon and zombie walk, you might want to think about feeding your Frankenstein at the university cafeteria, Alexandria coffee bar, and Pennalet caf\u00e9 at some point during the day. Pennalet will serve a special pie inspired by Frankenstein, and the main cafeteria is preparing both\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukategorisert"","block_context":{"text":"Ukategorisert","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/category\/ukategorisert\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":556,"url":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2018\/11\/08\/thoughts-on-margaret-saville\/","url_meta":{"origin":203,"position":3},"title":"Thoughts on Margaret Saville","author":"Jessica","date":"08\/11\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"At my recent lecture on Frankenstein, I mentioned the novel's famously contorted narrative structure: I'm particularly interested in the way that Mrs. Margaret Saville functions as the unseen, unheard, but ultimate arbiter of narrative, for it is only through her release of Captain Walton's letters that the story is known\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukategorisert"","block_context":{"text":"Ukategorisert","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/category\/ukategorisert\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2018\/11\/structure-of-Frankenstein-300x226.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":683,"url":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2019\/05\/25\/post_\/","url_meta":{"origin":203,"position":4},"title":"“In the university whither I was going I must form my own friends…”","author":"Jessica","date":"25\/05\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"While attending the American Literature Association conference in Boston, I could not resist the opportunity to visit a fellow Frankenreads project participant, Professor Deidre Lynch of Harvard University, and deliver a copy of Litteraria Pragensia. 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They've also got a graphic novel\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukategorisert"","block_context":{"text":"Ukategorisert","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/category\/ukategorisert\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}