Kipling’s Imperial Boy: Adolescence and Cultural Hybridity

by Don Randall

Kipling's Imperial Boy opens by examining the significance of boyhood in the evolution of European modernity. Chapter one shows how closely the figure of the adolescent (the 'boy') is associated with questions of imperial expansion and consolidation. The chapters that follow take up Rudyard Kipling's fiction of the imperial boy, emphasizing the imaginative link between adolescence and cultural hybridity and offering detailed readings of The Jungle Book, Stalky & Co ., and Kim.

198 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 2000

About the author

Having received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) in 1995, Don Randall subsequently held two distinguished postdoctoral fellowships, at The University of Calgary (1996-97), and at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada (1997-99). He began his Bilkent career in the fall of 1999. In 2004, he was a Distinguished Visitor in the Department of English, Communication and Film Studies at The University of Western Australia. His main research areas are postcolonial literature and British imperial literature, and he has published numerous articles in journals of international stature. He is the author of two books, the first on the fiction of Rudyard Kipling and the second on the poetry and fiction of the contemporary Australian author David Malouf.