KIPLING AND THE COLONIZATION OF IMAGINATION
KIPLING AND THE COLONIZATION OF IMAGINATION

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents an outline of the works belonging to the so-called colonizers of imagination and tries to identify R. Kipling’s response to the patterns of the colonial literature. His confrontation with this world of imagination springs from one of the most important cultural confrontations in the history of European empires, between imperial Britain and India, a confrontation that acted as an active and transforming force that engaged both Western and Eastern cultures in a process of mutual redefinition. Kipling’s representation of India is not only a response to assert the British legitimacy of its hegemonic claims but also the effect of cultural contradictions that ‘contaminated’ his texts with internal tensions, ambivalences that inevitably produced moments of hybridization.

• Details
• Contents