Deep-Time Tourism: "The Encantadas" and Crystal Palace Park

Abstract

Abstract: This essay explores how Herman Melville's "The Encantadas" (1854) participates in the rise of deep-time tourism, or the desire and market for encounters with long-vanished prehuman beings and places. The same year Putnam's Magazine published "The Encantadas" the Crystal Palace Park in London put on display the world's first full-sized, three-dimensional dinosaurs. After using this event to conceptualize deep-time tourism and the contradictions that define it, the essay makes a two-part argument about "The Encantadas." First, it shows how the tortoises in "The Encantadas" are Melville's literary equivalent to the Park's dinosaur reconstructions. Second, the essay argues that Melville is not simply using these apparently ancient beings to capitalize upon the burgeoning market for deep-time tourism. He is also using them to critically reflect on the desire to see prehistoric—or prehistoric-looking—creatures.