Ultrapassando a superficialidade do mundo: sensibilidades ambientais em meio à imensidão Antártica (1910-1917)

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, several expeditions were carried out with the aim of conquering the unknown that the Antarctic continent represented. After its discovery in the mid-1820s, the number of voyages intensified with the principal objective being its conquest, which would only happen between the first second decades of the twentieth century within the context that came to be known as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Science”. This dissertation seeks to analyze three of the expeditions that stood out between the years 1910 and 1917 due to the travel reports written by their captains and commanders: the British captains Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton and their respective expeditions Terra Nova and Endurance; and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen with the Fram expedition. Beyond being important events for human expansion across the globe, these undertakings constitute a phenomenon of analysis as the Antarctic was the last continent to be explored, and its conquest occurred in the unique milieu of growing nationalism and scientific research that predated the First World War. The objective of this dissertation is to go beyond an analysis of representation and problematize these expeditions in terms of how these authors constructed their realities and experienced and expressed the relationship between the body and their environment. The theoretical and methodological foundations of this study are based on interdisciplinarity, particularly a dialogue across the fields of environmental history, ecocriticism, and anthropology, with the intention of understanding how the natural world in the Antarctic was perceived, experienced, and related by these individuals.