Politics and Awe in Rudyard Kipling's Fiction

Politics and Awe in Rudyard Kipling's Fiction

Author: Peter Havholm

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1351910248

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There has been a resurgence of interest in Kipling among critics who struggle to reconcile the multiple pleasures offered by his fiction with the controversial political ideas that inform it. Peter Havholm takes up the challenge, piecing together Kipling's understanding of empire and humanity from evidence in Anglo-Indian and Indian newspapers of the 1870s and 1880s and offering a new explanation for Kipling's post-1891 turn to fantasy and stories written to be enjoyed by children. By dovetailing detailed contextual knowledge of British India with informed and sensitive close readings of well-known works like 'The Man Who Would Be King',' Kim', 'The Light That Failed', and 'They', Havholm offers a fresh reading of Kipling's early and late stories that acknowledges Kipling's achievement as a writer and illuminates the seductive allure of the imperialist fantasy.


Book Synopsis Politics and Awe in Rudyard Kipling's Fiction by : Peter Havholm

Download or read book Politics and Awe in Rudyard Kipling's Fiction written by Peter Havholm and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a resurgence of interest in Kipling among critics who struggle to reconcile the multiple pleasures offered by his fiction with the controversial political ideas that inform it. Peter Havholm takes up the challenge, piecing together Kipling's understanding of empire and humanity from evidence in Anglo-Indian and Indian newspapers of the 1870s and 1880s and offering a new explanation for Kipling's post-1891 turn to fantasy and stories written to be enjoyed by children. By dovetailing detailed contextual knowledge of British India with informed and sensitive close readings of well-known works like 'The Man Who Would Be King',' Kim', 'The Light That Failed', and 'They', Havholm offers a fresh reading of Kipling's early and late stories that acknowledges Kipling's achievement as a writer and illuminates the seductive allure of the imperialist fantasy.


Conservative Belief and the Imagination in Kipling’s Fiction

Conservative Belief and the Imagination in Kipling’s Fiction

Author: Mark Paffard

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-10-09

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 3031402200

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This book explores the tension between the conservatism and the imaginative process across the entirety of Rudyard Kipling’s fiction. It shows how Kipling the conservative thinker explores problematic aspects of Empire and the English class-system, both because it is unavoidable and because his art requires it. This tension is evident in the Indian and ‘Imperial’ Kipling and in his later ‘English’ stories. Situating Kipling’s fiction within changing social and political contexts, Mark Paffard shows the anxieties Kipling as a conservative responds to in the early Indian stories to be very different from those caused by the economic and technological upheaval of the ‘Belle Epoque’, and those arising from the First World War. Paffard reveals how Kipling’s development as a writer is shaped by his need to respond differently to a changing world: imperialist ideology and conservatism dictate the stories that he sets out to write, and his imagination and sympathy shape the stories that are finally written.


Book Synopsis Conservative Belief and the Imagination in Kipling’s Fiction by : Mark Paffard

Download or read book Conservative Belief and the Imagination in Kipling’s Fiction written by Mark Paffard and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the tension between the conservatism and the imaginative process across the entirety of Rudyard Kipling’s fiction. It shows how Kipling the conservative thinker explores problematic aspects of Empire and the English class-system, both because it is unavoidable and because his art requires it. This tension is evident in the Indian and ‘Imperial’ Kipling and in his later ‘English’ stories. Situating Kipling’s fiction within changing social and political contexts, Mark Paffard shows the anxieties Kipling as a conservative responds to in the early Indian stories to be very different from those caused by the economic and technological upheaval of the ‘Belle Epoque’, and those arising from the First World War. Paffard reveals how Kipling’s development as a writer is shaped by his need to respond differently to a changing world: imperialist ideology and conservatism dictate the stories that he sets out to write, and his imagination and sympathy shape the stories that are finally written.


The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling

The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling

Author: Rudyard Kipling

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2011-03-03

Total Pages: 963

ISBN-13: 0141966548

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Rudyard Kipling is one of the most magical storytellers in the English language. This new selection brings together the best of his short writings, following the development of his work over fifty years. They take us from the harsh, cruel, vividly realized world of the 'Indian' stories that made his name, through the experimental modernism of his middle period to the highly-wrought subtleties of his later pieces. Including the tale of insanity and empire, 'The Man Who Would Be King', the high-spirited 'The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat', the fable of childhood cruelty and revenge 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep', the menacing psychological study 'Mary Postgate' and the ambiguous portrayal of grief and mourning in 'The Gardener', here are stories of criminals, ghosts, femmes fatales, madness and murder.


Book Synopsis The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling by : Rudyard Kipling

Download or read book The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling written by Rudyard Kipling and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 963 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudyard Kipling is one of the most magical storytellers in the English language. This new selection brings together the best of his short writings, following the development of his work over fifty years. They take us from the harsh, cruel, vividly realized world of the 'Indian' stories that made his name, through the experimental modernism of his middle period to the highly-wrought subtleties of his later pieces. Including the tale of insanity and empire, 'The Man Who Would Be King', the high-spirited 'The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat', the fable of childhood cruelty and revenge 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep', the menacing psychological study 'Mary Postgate' and the ambiguous portrayal of grief and mourning in 'The Gardener', here are stories of criminals, ghosts, femmes fatales, madness and murder.


The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling

The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling

Author: Howard J. Booth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-09

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0521199727

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An overview of Kipling's work, his career and postcolonial views on his often controversial position on imperialism.


Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling by : Howard J. Booth

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling written by Howard J. Booth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of Kipling's work, his career and postcolonial views on his often controversial position on imperialism.


Kipling's Art of Fiction 1884-1901

Kipling's Art of Fiction 1884-1901

Author: David Sergeant

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-10

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0199684588

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David Sergeant grew up in west Cornwall and studied English at Oxford, where he is now a Junior Research Fellow. He is a published poet and has also written on Robert Burns and Ted Hughes.


Book Synopsis Kipling's Art of Fiction 1884-1901 by : David Sergeant

Download or read book Kipling's Art of Fiction 1884-1901 written by David Sergeant and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Sergeant grew up in west Cornwall and studied English at Oxford, where he is now a Junior Research Fellow. He is a published poet and has also written on Robert Burns and Ted Hughes.


The Return of the Mughal: Historical Fiction and Despotism in Colonial India, 1863–1908

The Return of the Mughal: Historical Fiction and Despotism in Colonial India, 1863–1908

Author: Alex Padamsee

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-11-03

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1137354941

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This Pivot explores the uses of the Mughal past in the historical fiction of colonial India. Through detailed reconsiderations of canonical works by Rudyard Kipling, Flora Annie Steel and Romesh Chunder Dutt, the author argues for a more complex and integral understanding of the part played by the Mughal imaginary in colonial and early Indian nationalist projections of sovereignty. Evoking the rich historical and transnational contexts of these literary narratives, the study demonstrates the ways in which, at successive moments of crisis and contestation in the later Raj, the British Indian state continued to be troubled by its early and profound investments in models of despotism first located by colonial administrators in the figure of the Mughal emperor. At the heart of these political fictions lay the issue of territoriality and the founding problem of a British claim to sole proprietorship of Indian land – a form of Orientalist exceptionalism that at once underpinned and could never fully be integrated with the colonial rule of law. Alongside its recovery of a wealth of popular and often overlooked colonial historiography, The Return of the Mughal emphasises the relevance of theories of political theology – from Carl Schmitt and Ernst Kantorowicz to Talal Asad and Giorgio Agamben – to our understanding of the fictional and jurisprudential histories of colonialism. This study aims to show just how closely the pageantry and romance of empire in India connects to its early politics of terror and even today continues to inform the figure of the Mughal in the sectarian politics of Hindu Nationalism.


Book Synopsis The Return of the Mughal: Historical Fiction and Despotism in Colonial India, 1863–1908 by : Alex Padamsee

Download or read book The Return of the Mughal: Historical Fiction and Despotism in Colonial India, 1863–1908 written by Alex Padamsee and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-03 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Pivot explores the uses of the Mughal past in the historical fiction of colonial India. Through detailed reconsiderations of canonical works by Rudyard Kipling, Flora Annie Steel and Romesh Chunder Dutt, the author argues for a more complex and integral understanding of the part played by the Mughal imaginary in colonial and early Indian nationalist projections of sovereignty. Evoking the rich historical and transnational contexts of these literary narratives, the study demonstrates the ways in which, at successive moments of crisis and contestation in the later Raj, the British Indian state continued to be troubled by its early and profound investments in models of despotism first located by colonial administrators in the figure of the Mughal emperor. At the heart of these political fictions lay the issue of territoriality and the founding problem of a British claim to sole proprietorship of Indian land – a form of Orientalist exceptionalism that at once underpinned and could never fully be integrated with the colonial rule of law. Alongside its recovery of a wealth of popular and often overlooked colonial historiography, The Return of the Mughal emphasises the relevance of theories of political theology – from Carl Schmitt and Ernst Kantorowicz to Talal Asad and Giorgio Agamben – to our understanding of the fictional and jurisprudential histories of colonialism. This study aims to show just how closely the pageantry and romance of empire in India connects to its early politics of terror and even today continues to inform the figure of the Mughal in the sectarian politics of Hindu Nationalism.


Transnational Gothic

Transnational Gothic

Author: Monika Elbert

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1317006887

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Offering a variety of critical approaches to late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic literature, this collection provides a transnational view of the emergence and flowering of the Gothic. The essays expand on now well-known approaches to the Gothic (such as those that concentrate exclusively on race, gender, or nation) by focusing on international issues: religious traditions, social reform, economic and financial pitfalls, manifest destiny and expansion, changing concepts of nationhood, and destabilizing moments of empire-building. By examining a wide array of Gothic texts, including novels, drama, and poetry, the contributors present the Gothic not as a peripheral, marginal genre, but as a central mode of literary exchange in an ever-expanding global context. Thus the traditional conventions of the Gothic, such as those associated with Ann Radcliffe and Monk Lewis, are read alongside unexpected Gothic formulations and lesser-known Gothic authors and texts. These include Mary Rowlandson and Bram Stoker, Frances and Anthony Trollope, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Gaskell, Theodore Dreiser, Rudyard Kipling, and Lafcadio Hearn, as well as the actors Edmund Kean and George Frederick Cooke. Individually and collectively, the essays provide a much-needed perspective that eschews national borders in order to explore the central role that global (and particularly transatlantic) exchange played in the development of the Gothic. British, American, Continental, Caribbean, and Asian Gothic are represented in this collection, which seeks to deepen our understanding of the Gothic as not merely a national but a global aesthetic.


Book Synopsis Transnational Gothic by : Monika Elbert

Download or read book Transnational Gothic written by Monika Elbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a variety of critical approaches to late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic literature, this collection provides a transnational view of the emergence and flowering of the Gothic. The essays expand on now well-known approaches to the Gothic (such as those that concentrate exclusively on race, gender, or nation) by focusing on international issues: religious traditions, social reform, economic and financial pitfalls, manifest destiny and expansion, changing concepts of nationhood, and destabilizing moments of empire-building. By examining a wide array of Gothic texts, including novels, drama, and poetry, the contributors present the Gothic not as a peripheral, marginal genre, but as a central mode of literary exchange in an ever-expanding global context. Thus the traditional conventions of the Gothic, such as those associated with Ann Radcliffe and Monk Lewis, are read alongside unexpected Gothic formulations and lesser-known Gothic authors and texts. These include Mary Rowlandson and Bram Stoker, Frances and Anthony Trollope, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Gaskell, Theodore Dreiser, Rudyard Kipling, and Lafcadio Hearn, as well as the actors Edmund Kean and George Frederick Cooke. Individually and collectively, the essays provide a much-needed perspective that eschews national borders in order to explore the central role that global (and particularly transatlantic) exchange played in the development of the Gothic. British, American, Continental, Caribbean, and Asian Gothic are represented in this collection, which seeks to deepen our understanding of the Gothic as not merely a national but a global aesthetic.


Culture and the Literary

Culture and the Literary

Author: Avishek Parui

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-01-26

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1786616017

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Culture and the Literary is a study of how cultural codes are constructed, consumed and conveyed as represented in selected works of fiction and non-fiction. Examining cultural studies as a discipline by revisiting some of its seminal figures, the book includes a study of selected literary as well as non-fictional texts. It offers a unique combination of three major theoretical frames: memory studies, thing theory, and affect studies. Drawing on fictional representations, theoretical frames and historical events, this book aims to provide a unique perspective into how culture as a phenomenon is represented, reified and re-membered in the world we inhabit today.


Book Synopsis Culture and the Literary by : Avishek Parui

Download or read book Culture and the Literary written by Avishek Parui and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-01-26 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture and the Literary is a study of how cultural codes are constructed, consumed and conveyed as represented in selected works of fiction and non-fiction. Examining cultural studies as a discipline by revisiting some of its seminal figures, the book includes a study of selected literary as well as non-fictional texts. It offers a unique combination of three major theoretical frames: memory studies, thing theory, and affect studies. Drawing on fictional representations, theoretical frames and historical events, this book aims to provide a unique perspective into how culture as a phenomenon is represented, reified and re-membered in the world we inhabit today.


Choice

Choice

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 854

ISBN-13:

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Book Synopsis Choice by :

Download or read book Choice written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 854 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Out of Bounds

Out of Bounds

Author: Alan G. Johnson

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0824860284

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Out of Bounds focuses on the crucial role that conceptions of iconic colonial Indian spaces—jungles, cantonments, cities, hill stations, bazaars, clubs—played in the literary and social production of British India. Author Alan Johnson illuminates the geographical, rhetorical, and ideological underpinnings of such depictions and, from this, argues that these spaces operated as powerful motifs in the acculturation of Anglo-India. He shows that the bicultural, intrinsically ambivalent outlook of Anglo-Indian writers is acutely sensitive to spatial motifs that, insofar as these condition the idea of home and homelessness, alternately support and subvert conventional colonial perspectives. Colonial spatial motifs not only informed European representations of India, but also shaped important aesthetic notions of the period, such as the sublime. This book also explains how and why Europeans’ rhetorical and visual depictions of the Indian subcontinent, whether ostensibly administrative, scientific, or aesthetic, constituted a primary means of memorializing Empire, creating an idiom that postcolonial India continues to use in certain ways. Consequently, Johnson examines specific motifs of Anglo-Indian cultural remembrance, such as the hunting memoir, hill station life, and the Mutiny, all of which facilitated the mythic iconography of the Raj. He bases his work on the premise that spatiality (the physical as well as social conceptualization of space) is a vital component of the mythos of colonial life and that the study of spatiality is too often a subset of a focus on temporality. Johnson reads canonical and lesser-known fiction, memoirs, and travelogues alongside colonial archival documents to identify shared spatial motifs and idioms that were common to the period. Although he discusses colonial works, he focuses primarily on the writings of Anglo-Indians such as Rudyard Kipling, John Masters, Jim Corbett, and Flora Annie Steel to demonstrate how conventions of spatial identity were rhetorically maintained—and continually compromised. All of these considerations amplify this book’s focus on the porosity of boundaries in literatures of the colony and of the nation.Out of Bounds will be of interest to not only postcolonial literary scholars, but also scholars and students in interdisciplinary nineteenth-century studies, South Asian cultural history, cultural anthropology, women’s studies, and sociology.


Book Synopsis Out of Bounds by : Alan G. Johnson

Download or read book Out of Bounds written by Alan G. Johnson and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of Bounds focuses on the crucial role that conceptions of iconic colonial Indian spaces—jungles, cantonments, cities, hill stations, bazaars, clubs—played in the literary and social production of British India. Author Alan Johnson illuminates the geographical, rhetorical, and ideological underpinnings of such depictions and, from this, argues that these spaces operated as powerful motifs in the acculturation of Anglo-India. He shows that the bicultural, intrinsically ambivalent outlook of Anglo-Indian writers is acutely sensitive to spatial motifs that, insofar as these condition the idea of home and homelessness, alternately support and subvert conventional colonial perspectives. Colonial spatial motifs not only informed European representations of India, but also shaped important aesthetic notions of the period, such as the sublime. This book also explains how and why Europeans’ rhetorical and visual depictions of the Indian subcontinent, whether ostensibly administrative, scientific, or aesthetic, constituted a primary means of memorializing Empire, creating an idiom that postcolonial India continues to use in certain ways. Consequently, Johnson examines specific motifs of Anglo-Indian cultural remembrance, such as the hunting memoir, hill station life, and the Mutiny, all of which facilitated the mythic iconography of the Raj. He bases his work on the premise that spatiality (the physical as well as social conceptualization of space) is a vital component of the mythos of colonial life and that the study of spatiality is too often a subset of a focus on temporality. Johnson reads canonical and lesser-known fiction, memoirs, and travelogues alongside colonial archival documents to identify shared spatial motifs and idioms that were common to the period. Although he discusses colonial works, he focuses primarily on the writings of Anglo-Indians such as Rudyard Kipling, John Masters, Jim Corbett, and Flora Annie Steel to demonstrate how conventions of spatial identity were rhetorically maintained—and continually compromised. All of these considerations amplify this book’s focus on the porosity of boundaries in literatures of the colony and of the nation.Out of Bounds will be of interest to not only postcolonial literary scholars, but also scholars and students in interdisciplinary nineteenth-century studies, South Asian cultural history, cultural anthropology, women’s studies, and sociology.