David Faulkner, Director of Cornell University’s First-Year Writing Program at the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, comments on Rudyard Kipling’s new poems being published today.
Faulkner says:
“Despite his reputation for macho imperialism, Kipling was one of the first English writers to grasp the globalized, multi-cultural world of the 1880s and 1890s, a colonial world that already held the seeds of a post-colonial one. Much of Kipling’s earlier, lesser-known writing reveals unexpectedly diverse perspectives on India and astonishing literary experimentation. “Ideally, this new edition, including dozens of newly discovered poems, will give fresh impetus to the re-examination of Kipling’s legacy that is beginning to emerge. These poems could help spark renewed interest in Kipling’s complexities—Kipling not just as imperialist but as imitator of Oscar Wilde, as ethnographic liberal, as critic of administrative blindness, and as skeptical theorist of cosmopolitan tourism.”
NOTE: The Cornell Library holds a collection of Kipling papers, including original drafts of his poems and stories, as well as photographs chronicling his time in India. The curator and exhibitions coordinator of the collection are available for interviews.
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