Borealism: An Aesthetics Framework for the Study of the North

Abstract

Even though numerous writers, explorers and historians have expressed their fascination for the concept of North, from Antiquity to the present day, it is not easy to find a univocal definition that compiles the diverse boreal myths and their imaginary, even less within a scientific discourse. Various attempts to define the North as a geographical territory, as an object of knowledge or as a set of images and representations, are frustrated by the impossibility of apprehending it. The objective of this article is to develop a theoretical framework to define the North through the concept of borealism, understanding it from the inherent dynamism of the writing processes inspired by the Circumpolar North (European, American and even Asian), which allows developing a critical approach to the imaginary of the North starting from an aesthetic approach that includes and goes beyond the illusory reference of each individual perception.