Questioning Agency Through Intergenerational Dialogue: The Adult Ghosts and the Forgetting Children in Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill
From its initial publication, Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill has been regarded as children’s literature and Kipling’s imperialism—how he teaches and justifies British Empire’s imperial ideology—has been the main issue for critics in children’s literature studies. With the same issue in mind,...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2020-12-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/8036 |
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| Summary: | From its initial publication, Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill has been regarded as children’s literature and Kipling’s imperialism—how he teaches and justifies British Empire’s imperial ideology—has been the main issue for critics in children’s literature studies. With the same issue in mind, I aim to complicate Kipling’s imperialism in Puck by revealing the ‘overlaid tints and textures’ embedded in the intergenerational dialogue between the adult heroes and the children. Specifically, this essay argues that Kipling does not simply represent the adult voice within the imperial discourse, but rather renders ambiguity in uniting the anxieties of the Empire’s previous generation and the hopes for the Empire’s future generation. In the story, although Kipling’s narrative return to the construction of the old England and evocation of its war heroes seem designed for the Empire’s imperialism, the conversations between the adult heroes and Dan and Una raise the unsettling issue of the past heroes’ being wounded ghosts brought about by the British Empire’s imperialism. To construct the questioning narrative, Kipling employs the children as engaging collaborators, but he also restrains them, through the device of the magical amnesia, from being fully grown agents. Rendering the ambiguous agency of both the adults and the children, Kipling most importantly challenges the questionable agency of the British Empire. |
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| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |