Rudyard Kipling's fiction : mapping psychic spaces / Lizzy Welby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Welby, Lizzy, author.

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in Victorian culture.

Edinburgh critical studies in Victorian culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminist criticism.

Psychoanalytic interpretation.

Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936--Criticism and interpretation.

Kipling, Rudyard.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 246 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This study provides an entirely new reading of Kipling's fiction using the feminist psychoanalytic methodology of Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous, focusing particularly on ideas of the abjected maternal feminine. It examines Kipling's ambivalent relationship to the India of his childhood and the 'loss' of his mother figures. In doing so, it peels back the layers of masculine bravado that continues to characterize Kipling's fiction to reveal a valorized 'feminine' space. From readings of the 1888 story 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep' through The Jungle Book and Stalky & Co., Kim, The Day's Work, Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, Lizzy Welby demonstrates that Kipling created ways of rediscovering a symbolised feminine landscape as a restorative space, which was part of his 'psychic mapping'.

Contents:

Introduction: Two separate sides to his head

Kipling's ambivalent India

Paradise lost: Kipling's Southsea years

Mastering the law-of-the-Father in the Jungle Book and Stalky & Co.

Empire of contradictions: desire for the impossible Mother India in Kim

The 'Sorrowful state of manhood': Kipling's adults in India

The ascent from the abyss: Dedication to duty in The Day's Work

Conclusion: This other Eden

Puck of Pook's Hill, Rewards and Fairies.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 30 Oct 2017).

ISBN:

0-7486-9856-6