The narcissism of empire: loss, rage, and revenge in Thomas De Quincey, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and Isak Dinesen

2007 ◽  
Vol 45 (03) ◽  
pp. 45-1348-45-1348
Keyword(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
Thomas De Quincey ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
Isak Dinesen

scholarly journals Haunted Oppressors: The Deconstruction of Manliness in the Imperial Gothic Stories of Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Anna Berger
Keyword(s):  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
Adventure Story ◽  
Adventure Fiction ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Adventure Stories

Building on Patrick Brantlinger’s description of imperial Gothic fiction as “that blend of adventure story with Gothic elements”, this article compares the narrative formula of adventure fiction to two tales of haunting produced in a colonial context: Rudyard Kipling’s “The Mark of the Beast” (1890) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Brown Hand” (1899). My central argument is that these stories form an antithesis to adventure fiction: while adventure stories reaffirm the belief in the imperial mission and the racial superiority of the British through the display of hypermasculine heroes, Kipling’s and Conan Doyle’s Gothic tales establish connections between imperial decline and masculine failure. In doing so, they destabilise the binary construction between civilised Western self and savage Eastern Other and thus anticipate one of the major concerns of postcolonial criticism. This article proposes, therefore, that it is useful to examine “The Mark of the Beast” and “The Brown Hand” through a postcolonial lens.

Voyaging Out

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
Sarah LeFanu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
Mary Kingsley ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
Imperial Institute ◽  
The Military ◽  
Board Ship ◽  
African Nationalism

This chapter takes the reader through the months immediately preceding the departure to South Africa of the three protagonists of the book, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle and Mary Kingsley, in, respectively, January, February and March 1900. We see Rudyard and Carrie Kipling enduring their first Christmas without their daughter Josephine, and Kipling’s belief in the necessity and the good of war in South Africa, despite the military reversals of its early months; we see Conan Doyle throwing himself into war preparations and being inoculated against typhoid during the voyage; we see Mary Kingsley giving her last lecture in London at the Imperial Institute, and, on board ship, writing a critique of Christianity and a plea in favor of African nationalism, stressing the link between African land ownership and freedom from Western interference.

The Fin-de-Siècle Scottish Revival

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Scottish Literature ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle

As the Irish Revival took shape and the Home Rule debate dominated UK politics, what was happening in Scotland? This book reveals distinct but comparable concerns with cultural defence and revivalism in fin-de-siècle Scotland, evident in the work of a number of writers and artists including Robert Louis Stevenson, Patrick Geddes, Fiona Macleod, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Mona Caird, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Duncan and various contributors to The Evergreen. Situating Scottish literature and art alongside international developments in culture, especially the rise of decadence, symbolism and Celticism, the book demonstrates the ways in which dissident fin-de-siècle styles and ideas supported and defined the Scottish Revival.

scholarly journals Rodrigo Lacerda: estilos que se fundem entre a vida e os livros traduzidos

Letrônica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 32076
Author(s):  
Marcilene Moreira Donadoni
Keyword(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Raymond Carver ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle

Na trajetória para se consagrarem escritores, vários autores se enveredam por diferentes caminhos artísticos. Assim, conforme seus nomes ganham destaque na mídia, suas obras começam a sair das últimas prateleiras empoeiradas das pequenas livrarias. Neste artigo, nos interessa apresentar o trabalho de Rodrigo Lacerda, conceituado e premiado escritor de literatura brasileira, por meio de sua relação com a atividade de tradução e adaptação. O objetivo é mostrar a relação entre a obra literária autoral de Lacerda e suas obras de tradução e adaptação de literatura de língua inglesa. Para tanto, propomos refletir sua habilidade com a arte da tradução e da adaptação de romances como O médico e o monstro (1992), de Robert Louis Stevenson; A nuvem da morte (1993), de Arthur Conan Doyle; Coleção Movimentos da Arte, com o título Expressionismo (2002), de Shulamith Behr; Poemas (2006), de Raymond Carver e O pequeno príncipe, de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (2015). Ancorados nos estudos de Candido (2006), Kristeva (2005) e Perrone-Moisés (1998) no que concerne à arte literária, demonstraremos que, com leveza e suavidade, o tradutor propõe resgatar o leitor juvenil que desconhece os clássicos literários, especialmente com a publicação de seu romance Hamlet ou Amleto? Shakespeare para jovens curiosos e adultos preguiçosos (2015).

scholarly journals Childishness, Primitivism and the Primitive as Child in the Anti-Imperialist Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Bogle Petterson
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Adult World

<p>My thesis examines the connection between childishness and primitivism in four key works by Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped, "The Beach of Falesa", The Ebb-Tide and A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. In particular, I discuss Stevenson's depiction of "primitive" peoples - the Scottish Highlanders of Kidnapped and the Pacific Islanders in the other works - as childish or childlike. While this is a trope that was typically used to justify imperial domination by "adult" Europeans (by writers such as H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, for instance), for Stevenson the case is somewhat different because of the extent to which he valorises childishness. The "Introduction" places Stevenson's anti-imperialist deployment of the primitive-as-child trope in the context of romanticism and primitivism more generally, trends which idealised children and primitives in response to the degrading forces of industrial capitalist development in Europe. The first chapter shows how Stevenson's idealised notion of childish Highlanders in Kidnapped is used to valorise them at the expense of the sedentary and conformist "adult" world of the Lowlands. In the second chapter, I show how Stevenson similarly valorises the childish native characters in "The Beach of Falesa" and The Ebb-Tide, while at the same time he dismantles the notion that European colonisers of the Pacific possess any "adult" authority whatsoever by depicting the latter as being in the grip of infantile delusions. In these late fictional works, the idealised childishness of the natives, characterised by growth and vitality, is contrasted with European infantilism, which signifies the cultural regression and insularity that Stevenson saw as closely connected with imperial activity. My final chapter shows how these two opposed notions of childishness-as-growth and childishness-as-decay/insularity inform Stevenson's non-fiction anti-imperialist work, A Footnote to History. My thesis aims to show that Stevenson was not so constrained by imperialist cliches and rhetoric as some critics have argued; rather, I suggest that his sympathy for the victims of colonisation allowed him to dramatically undermine this rhetoric.</p>

Something of Themselves

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah LeFanu
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Mary Kingsley ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
South African War ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
Cultural Legacies

In early 1900, the paths of three British writers--Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley and Arthur Conan Doyle--crossed in South Africa, during what has become known as Britain's last imperial war. Each of the three had pressing personal reasons to leave England behind, but they were also motivated by notions of duty, service, patriotism and, in Kipling's case, jingoism. Sarah LeFanu compellingly opens an unexplored chapter of these writers' lives, at a turning point for Britain and its imperial ambitions. Was the South African War, as Kipling claimed, a dress rehearsal for the Armageddon of World War One? Or did it instead foreshadow the anti-colonial guerrilla wars of the later twentieth century? Weaving a rich and varied narrative, LeFanu charts the writers' paths in the theatre of war, and explores how this crucial period shaped their cultural legacies, their shifting reputations, and their influence on colonial policy.

scholarly journals Childishness, Primitivism and the Primitive as Child in the Anti-Imperialist Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Bogle Petterson
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Adult World

<p>My thesis examines the connection between childishness and primitivism in four key works by Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped, "The Beach of Falesa", The Ebb-Tide and A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. In particular, I discuss Stevenson's depiction of "primitive" peoples - the Scottish Highlanders of Kidnapped and the Pacific Islanders in the other works - as childish or childlike. While this is a trope that was typically used to justify imperial domination by "adult" Europeans (by writers such as H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, for instance), for Stevenson the case is somewhat different because of the extent to which he valorises childishness. The "Introduction" places Stevenson's anti-imperialist deployment of the primitive-as-child trope in the context of romanticism and primitivism more generally, trends which idealised children and primitives in response to the degrading forces of industrial capitalist development in Europe. The first chapter shows how Stevenson's idealised notion of childish Highlanders in Kidnapped is used to valorise them at the expense of the sedentary and conformist "adult" world of the Lowlands. In the second chapter, I show how Stevenson similarly valorises the childish native characters in "The Beach of Falesa" and The Ebb-Tide, while at the same time he dismantles the notion that European colonisers of the Pacific possess any "adult" authority whatsoever by depicting the latter as being in the grip of infantile delusions. In these late fictional works, the idealised childishness of the natives, characterised by growth and vitality, is contrasted with European infantilism, which signifies the cultural regression and insularity that Stevenson saw as closely connected with imperial activity. My final chapter shows how these two opposed notions of childishness-as-growth and childishness-as-decay/insularity inform Stevenson's non-fiction anti-imperialist work, A Footnote to History. My thesis aims to show that Stevenson was not so constrained by imperialist cliches and rhetoric as some critics have argued; rather, I suggest that his sympathy for the victims of colonisation allowed him to dramatically undermine this rhetoric.</p>

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