Rudyard Kipling (Writers and Their Work) - Softcover

Montefiore, Jan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0746308272 ISBN 13: 9780746308271

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Rudyard Kipling was a Victorian and an early modernist, a disciplinarian imperialist who sympathised with children and outlaws, a globe-trotter who mythologised 'Old England', and a world-famous author whom intellectuals despised. The central theme of this book is the way his work and its reception are both fissured and energised by these contradictions. This thorough study initially discusses Kipling's ambivalent knowing attitude to unknowable otherness, his rhetorical imitations of Indian and demotic vernaculars, his work ethic and ideal of imperialist masculinity, thus contextualising the central discussion of his masterpiece Kim which, almost uniquely, takes Indian otherness as a source of pleasure not anxiety. Jan Montefiore describes Kipling as a writer on the cusp of modernity, examining how his fiction and poetry engaged with radio, cinema and air travel, how his poetry anticipated and influenced the subversive uncertainties of modernism, and how his post-war contributions to the literature

About this title

About the Author:

Jan Montefiore teaches English Literature at the University of Kent.

About this edition

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0746308272
• ISBN 13: 9780746308271
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128