ABSTRACT
The introduction situates the project in wider historical and critical contexts, with focus on how literary depictions draw from and contribute to intersecting spheres of meaning that form arctic discourses. As a background to analyses of a selection of speculative short stories and novels, published between 1818 and today, specific Arctic instabilities and incongruities are outlined. The primary sources are briefly introduced along with the working definition of speculative fiction and its relation to modes such as the Gothic, the uncanny, the fantastic, and the marvelous.
