History 4339
23 September 2008
Kipling and the Great Game
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
• Born in Bombay, first language Urdu
• Sent “home” to England to be educated at age 6
• Not a success at United Services College
• Returned to India in 1882 as journalist
• Came back to England in 1889
• 1907: Nobel Prize for Literature
• WWI: son died, Kipling devastated
• Kipling as imperialist?
• celebrates many aspects of empire
• also highly critical (e.g. colonial administration)
• Kim: a novel about breaking down categories
• a more positive view of South Asian religion (the lama)
Kipling Poems [see Kipling's Complete Verse, Norlin PR4851 1989]
“The Ballad of East and West”
“The White Man’s Burden”
“Fuzzy-Wuzzy”
(Soudan Expeditionary Force)
“Recessional”