Rudyard Kipling and the Fiction of Adolescence

178 Pages·1982·16.21 MB·English

by  Robert F. Moss (auth.)

RUDYARD KIPLING AND THE FICTION OF ADOLESCENCE
By the same author
KARLOFF AND COMPANY: The Horror Film
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
JUDGE HORTON AND THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS (with
Barbara Bauer)
RUDYARD KIPLING AND
THE FICTION OF
ADOLESCENCE
Robert F. Moss
© Robert F. Moss 1982
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1982 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-05711-5 ISBN 978-1-349-05709-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05709-2
To
My Mother and Father
"It's not brutality," murmured little Hartopp, as though
answering a question no one had asked. "It's boy; only boy."
Stalky & Co.
Contents
Acknowledgements lX
Introduction Xl
1 The Foundations 1
2 The Adolescent Strain 34
3 Kipling's Schoolroom:
The Evolution of a Training Process 58
4 Kipling's Philosophy
of Education in Its Final Form 75
5 Clash of Loyalties:
Kipling's Men in Conflict 91
6 Between Two Worlds:
The Divided Self in Kipling's
Adolescents 107
7 Kipling's Triumph:
The Double Boyhood of Kimball O'Hara 128
Conclusion 142
Appendix 148
Notes 151
Bibliography 158
Index 161
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professors Louis
Cornell and Carl Woodring, under whose patient and discerning
supervision an earlier version of this work - my doctoral dis
sertation at Columbia Univeristy - was written. I am also very
grateful to my good friend Barbara Bauer for her generous
assistance in the preparation of the manuscript.
The author and publishers acknowledge with thanks the co
operation of Charles Scribner's Sons, Doubleday & Co. Inc. and
A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of the National Trust for permission to
quote extracts from the works and autobiography of Rudyard
Kipling.
IX
Introduction
"Time that with this strange excuse," wrote W.H. Auden,
"Pardons Kipling and his views .... "Forty years after this poem
was written, Kipling is still one of the most controversial and
enduringly popular authors, with a full complement of advocates
and detractors fiercely squared off against each other.
The first thing the student of Kipling learns is that his subject
has been the victim of critical neglect; the second is that this
"neglect" occupies two or three shelves in the library and that
essays, biographies, and full-length studies of Kipling (in four
different languages) are there in abundance. It is the abiding
paradox of Kipling scholarship that while his reputation stopped
growing about 1902, the literature about him did not. Of course
this curious situation may in part be attributed to Kipling's on
going popular success ("He had always had his audience," John
Beecroft points out in The Best of Kipling); he is simply too
durable to be ignored. But it must also be remembered that
extra-literary factors in Kipling's work have played a role; as the
foremost spokesman for Tory imperialism, he inevitably drew a
good deal of attention (both favourable and unfavourable) for his
political views.
The job of categorizing the rather extensive body of critical
writing on Kipling has been undertaken by Elliot Gilbert in the
introduction to his Kipling and the Critics, a collection of essays
by different critics. Gilbert perceives three major traditions in
Kipling scholarship: (1) those who damn Kipling for his right
wing politics; (2) those who praise him for the same reason (and,
more significantly, those who defend, without necessarily
excusing, his political convictions); and (3) those who focus on the
aesthetic aspects of Kipling's work. In Gilbert's schema, Richard
Le Galliene's Rudyard Kzpling: A Criticism, Robert Buchanan's
essay "The Voice of the Hooligan" and W .J. Peddicord's Rudyard
Reviewed would belong in the first category; Walter Besant's
reply to Buchanan (which appeared along with the Buchanan
XI