ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with fiction, the largest body of imaginative works dealing with Antarctica, with an eye to giving equal weight to both literary and popular texts and discusses more briefly poetry, drama, and film. While drama, poetry and prose are all forms that predate human encounters with Antarctica, film developed alongside it: "The classical era of polar exploration and the start of motion pictures took place at almost the same time". Many of the best-known filmic responses to Antarctic come out of this documentary tradition. Antarctica is the only continent where humans have never lived permanently, the archetypal Antarctic narrative–both fiction and non-fiction–takes the form of a journey. Fiction and non-fiction are entangled in the Antarctic imaginary. A historical approach would show that creative responses to the Antarctic have tended to come in waves, responding to particular historical events: expeditions, discoveries, adventures, tragedies, controversies.
