Editing Thule (section)

==Literary references==
===Classical literature===
In the metaphorical sense of a far-off land or an unattainable goal, [[Virgil]] coined the term ''Ultima Thule'' ([[Georgics]], 1. 30) meaning "farthermost Thule".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://quotes.dictionary.com/furthermost_thule_ultima_thule |title=Archived copy |access-date=2011-03-14 |url-status = dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110710123344/http://quotes.dictionary.com/furthermost_thule_ultima_thule |archive-date=2011-07-10 }}</ref>

[[Seneca the Younger]] writes of a day when new lands will be discovered past Thule.<ref>Seneca: Medea, v. 379. Translated by Frank Justus Miller [https://www.theoi.com/Text/SenecaMedea.html]: "There will come an age in the far-off years when Ocean shall unloose the bonds of things, when the whole broad earth shall be revealed, when Tethys shall disclose new worlds and Thule not be the limit of the lands." (Original text [https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/sen.medea.shtml]:
''"venient annis saecula seris,''
quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
laxet et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
nec sit terris ultima Thule"'').''</ref> This was later quoted widely in the context of [[Christopher Columbus]]' voyages.{{Citation needed|date=May 2016}}

A work of prose fiction in Greek by [[Antonius Diogenes]] entitled ''The Wonders Beyond Thule'' appeared c. AD 150 or earlier. (Gerald N. Sandy, in the introduction to his translation of [[Photios I of Constantinople|Photius]]' ninth century summary of the work,<ref name="wonders_intro">{{cite book
 | editor = B. P. Reardon
 | year = 1989
 | title = Collected Ancient Greek Novels
 | publisher = University of California Press
 | location = Berkeley, Los Angeles, London
 | isbn = 978-0-520-04306-0}}</ref>
notes that this Thule most closely matches Iceland.)

The "known world' of the Europeans came to be viewed as bounded in the east by India and in the west by Thule, as expressed in the ''[[Consolation of Philosophy]]'' (III, 203 = metrus V, v. 7) by [[Boethius]]. "For though the earth, as far as India's shore, tremble before the laws you give, though Thule bow to your service on earth's farthest bounds, yet if thou canst not drive away black cares, if thou canst not put to flight complaints, then is no true power thine."<ref name="Consolation">{{cite book| editor = Irwin Edman| others=W. V. Cooper (trans.)| year = 1943| title = The Consolation of Philosophy| publisher = The Modern Library, Random House| location = New York}}</ref>

===Medieval and early modern literature===
By the [[Late Middle Ages]], scholars were linking Iceland and/or Greenland to the name Thule and/or places reported by the Irish mariner [[Saint Brendan]] (in the 6th century) and other distant or mythical locations, such as [[Hy Brasil]] and [[Cockaigne]]. These scholars included works by [[Dicuil]] (see above), the [[Anglo-Saxon]] monk the [[Venerable Bede]] in ''[[De ratione temporum]]'', the [[Landnámabók]],{{citation needed|date=April 2016}} by the anonymous ''[[Historia Norwegie]]'',{{citation needed|date=April 2016}} and by the German cleric [[Adam of Bremen]] in his ''[[Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church]]'', where they cite both ancient writers' use of Thule as well as new knowledge since the end of antiquity. All these authors also understood that other islands were situated to the north of Britain.

[[Eustathius of Thessalonica]], in his twelfth-century commentary on the ''[[Iliad]],'' wrote that the inhabitants of Thule were at war with a tribe whose members dwarf-like, only 20 fingers in height.<ref>{{cite web|author=Eustathius of Thessalonica|title=Eustath. ad Hom. |page= 372|url=https://www.theoi.com/Phylos/Pygmaioi.html|website=Theoi.com/phylos/Pygmaioi}}</ref> The American classical scholar [[Charles Anthon]] believed this legend may have been rooted in history (although exaggerated), if the dwarf or pygmy tribe were interpreted as being a smaller [[Indigenous peoples|aboriginal]] tribe of Britain which the people on Thule had encountered.<ref>{{cite book|title=A Classical Dictionary, ''Vol. II''|date= 1888|author=Anthon, Charles |page= 1146}}</ref>

[[Petrarch]], in the fourteenth century, wrote in his ''[[Epistolae familiares]]'' ("Familiar Letters") that Thule lay in the unknown regions of the far north-west.<ref>{{cite book|author=Petrarch (14 century)|title=Epistolae Familiares'', III. 1''}}</ref>

A madrigal by [[Thomas Weelkes]], entitled ''Thule'' (1600), describes it with reference to the Icelandic volcano [[Hekla]]: {{poemquote|Thule, the period of cosmography,
Doth vaunt of [[Hekla|Hecla]], whose sulphureous fire
Doth melt the frozen clime and thaw the sky;
Trinacrian [[Mount Etna|Etna]]'s flames ascend not higher ...<ref>{{cite book|url=http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2268.html|author=Weelkes, Thomas|title=RPO – Thomas Weelkes : Thule, the Period of Cosmography|url-status = dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070809082644/http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2268.html|archive-date=2007-08-09}}</ref>}}

The English poet [[Ambrose Philips]] began, but did not complete, a poem concerning ''[[s:Pastorals Epistles Odes (1748)/Fable of Thule|The Fable of Thule]]'' which he published in 1748.

Thule is referred to in [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]]'s poem "[[Der König in Thule]]" (1774). The King and Kingdom of Thule referenced in the poem have no historical basis, nor did Goethe claim such. Goethe's poem was 
famously set to music by [[Franz Schubert]] (D 367, 1816), [[Franz Liszt]] (S.531) and [[Robert Schumann]] (Op.67, No.1), and in the collection ''[[s:Ultima Thule|Ultima Thule]]'' (1880) by [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]].

===Modern literature===

[[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s poem "[[Poems by Edgar Allan Poe#Dream-Land (1844)|Dream-Land]]" (1844) begins with the following stanza: {{poemquote|By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright.
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule –
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space – out of Time.}}

John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg wrote on the subject in 1885: {{Blockquote|
What is the mind’s ''ultima Thule''? What substance must be regarded as first, and therefore as the seed of the universe? What is the eternal Something, of which the temporal is but a manifestation? Matter? Spirit? Matter and Spirit? Something behind both and from which they have sprung, neither Matter nor Spirit, but their Creator? Or is there in reality neither Matter nor Spirit, but only an agnostic Cause of the phenomena erroneously assigned by us to body and mind?

After spending many years in profoundly investigating this problem, I have at last struck bottom. Unhesitatingly and unconditionally I adopt materialism, and declare it to be the sole and all-sufficient explanation of the universe. This affords the only thoroughly scientific system; and nowhere but in its legitimate conclusions can thought find suitable resting-place, the heart complete satisfaction, and life a perfect basis. Unless it accepts this system, philosophy will be but drift-wood, instead of the stream of thought whose current bears all truth. Materialism, thorough, consistent, and fearless, not the timid, reserved, and half-hearted kind, is the hope of the world.|''The Final Science: or Spiritual Materialism'' (1885) by John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg (1835–1903), p.&nbsp;6<ref>{{cite book|author=Stuckenberg, John Henry Wilbrandt|date=1885|url=https://archive.org/stream/thefinalscience00stucuoft#page/8/mode/1up |title=The Final Science: or Spiritual Materialism|page=6|publisher=New York : Funk & Wagnalls}}</ref>}}

[[Kelly Miller (scientist)|Kelly Miller]], addressing the Hampton Alumni Association in 1899, explained that

"Civilization may be defined as the sum total of those influences and agencies that make for knowledge and virtue. This is the goal, the ''ultima Thule,'' of all human strivings. The essential factors of civilization are knowledge, industry, culture, and virture."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/lcrbmrp.t2116/?sp=6|title=The Primary Needs of the Negro Race: An Address delivered before the Alumni Association of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute|last=Miller|first=Kelly|publisher=Howard University|year=1899|location=Washington, DC|pages=6}}</ref>

[[The Fortunes of Richard Mahony|''Ultima Thule'']] is the title of the 1929 novel by [[Henry Handel Richardson]], set in colonial [[Australia]].

[[Hal Foster]]'s protagonist [[Prince Valiant]] gets his title from being the son of Aguar, exiled king of Thule who has taken refuge in the [[The Fens|Fens]] during the days of [[King Arthur]]. Foster places this kingdom of Thule on the Norwegian mainland, near [[Trondheim]].

"Ultima Thule" is a short story written by author [[Vladimir Nabokov]] and published in ''New Yorker'' magazine on April 7, 1973.<ref>{{Cite magazine | url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/04/07/ultima-thule | title=Ultima Thule| magazine=The New Yorker| date=1973-03-31}}</ref>

Ultima Thule is mentioned in ''[[The Name of the Rose]]'' by [[Umberto Eco]] in reference to an illuminated manuscript that the narrator/character Adso sees when he explores the library labyrinth alone at the end of the third day. "I opened a richly illuminated volume that, by its style, seemed to me to come from the monasteries of Ultima Thule."<ref>[[Eco, Umberto]]. [[The Name of the Rose]]. Translated by William Weaver, First edition., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. p.240</ref>

[[Jorge Luis Borges]] uses the classic Latin phrase "ultima Thule" in his poem A Reader.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.poesi.as/jlb0726.htm|title = Un Lector}}</ref> He uses the phrase to connect the study of Latin in his younger years to his more recent efforts to read the Icelandic poet [[Snorri Sturluson]].

Bernard Cornwell references Thule in his novel ''The Lords of the North'', the third book in the series ''The Last Kingdom''. The character Uhtred of Bebbanburg calls it, "that strange land of ice and flame".

Thule is mentioned in ''[[Asterix and the Chieftain's Daughter]]''.

[[Cassandra Clare]]'s ''[[The Shadowhunter Chronicles]]'', features an alternate dimension called Thule.

Thule is the name of an artificial polar island in [[Sue Burke]]'s sci-fi novel Dual Memory.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.tor.com/2023/06/01/book-review-dual-memory-by-sue-burke/ | title=Dual Memory Confirms Sue Burke as a Modern SFF Master | date=June 2023 }}</ref>