FROM THE POLE TO THE EQUATOR: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE NONHUMAN IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN NARRATIVES OF POLAR EXPLORATION.

This paper examines depictions of wildlife in accounts of Italian polar exploration--both factual and fictive--at the turn of the 20th century, applying a posthumanist ecocritical perspective to a cultural imaginary encompassing Emilio Salgari's adventure writings as well as colonial exploration's science and practice. It begins with two sources revealing an era of exploration marked by implicit animal violence: avant-garde filmmakers Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi's Dal polo all'equatore (1986), a reframed version of colonial footage by Luca Comerio, and the chronicle of the Italian North Pole expedition led by the Duke of Abruzzi (1899-1901). Comparative analysis then turns to Salgari's polar fiction, re-evaluated here as an aspirational vision privileging wildlife observation. I argue for a recalibration of human-animal interactions, highlighting how figurations of accounts of human animal cruelty and animal awareness interweave with the actions of explorers who alternately harmed or protected wildlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]