Writing Geographical Exploration (review)

Writing Geographical Exploration is part of the Northern Lights series published by the University of Calgary Press and the Arctic Institute of North America. The series includes works treating the northern region of North America from a variety of disciplines. Focusing on the seventeenth-century exploration account of Captain Thomas James, Writing Geographical Exploration represents a departure from Wayne Davies' regular focus on urban geography. Using The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James (1633) as a case study, his aim is to 'try to create a more systematic introductory approach to the issues of writing and interpreting exploration narratives.' Through an overview, at an introductory level, of scholarship from the last several decades - trends, for example, in new historicism, readership theory, and cognitive psychology (stretching back to Piaget) - the first half of the book is devoted to illustrating the argument that exploration narratives ought not to be read as unmediated fact, or considered relevant only for their geographical descriptions. Davies provides a number of charts labelled 'Themes in Exploration Literature,' 'Influences on the Construction of an Exploration Text,' and 'Stages of Interpretation' to provide a visual and quantitative paradigm with which to approach the genre of travel writing. In the words of Davies himself, 'most of these ideas will be familiar to those working in literary criticism, and could be taken for granted,' though he claims that 'the application of these ideas to exploration narratives by geographers, is still in its infancy.'

The second half of the book then shifts to James's account of his 1631-32 voyage attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. Davies provides context for the voyage and the writing of the narrative and counters the negative critical attention given James since the nineteenth century. He convincingly overturns the claim that James was an incompetent captain and argues that, despite his failure to find the Northwest Passage, the narrative of his attempt needs to be valued for its other merits, both scientific and literary. In the scientific realm, Davies discusses, among other things, the influence of James's text on Robert Boyle's work on cold climates and his careful attention to calculations of location. In the literary realm, Davies urges that, though not Canadian, James be given some attention in the Canadian literary tradition, since the narrative of his travels in the Hudson and James Bay areas represents some of the earliest writing in English on the Canadian North, employs familiar Canadian themes of confronting the wilderness, and includes two more traditionally literary pieces in the form of two poems written during the voyage. Davies also presents a case for including James in the Anglo-Welsh literary tradition because of his Welsh background, some stylistic features, and his use of New South Wales as a designation of the area south of Hudson Bay. Further, Davies points to the possible influence of The Strange and Dangerous Voyage on other writers, including Coleridge in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'

Though not a geographer, and therefore unable to assess fully the usefulness of this book to the discipline, I would, nonetheless, suggest that because of the introductory nature of the material and its presentation, Writing Geographical Exploration would be most suitable for undergraduates from a variety of fields or a more general readership interested in one of the early explorers of the Canadian Arctic. Structurally, the book would be more effective if it were more concise (particularly the first section), yet divided into fewer subsections, allowing for a more nuanced argument developed from the primary text. Aesthetically, the book is attractively designed and incorporates visual material from James's text along with several charts, though there are an unfortunate number of typographical errors.