The Visual in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim: Revisiting Orientalism and Syncretism through a Multimodal and Literary Criticism Perspective

Abstract

In the critical context of renewed interest in the works of Rudyard Kipling by key scholars in postcolonial studies, this article investigates the role of the illustrations and textually mediated images in the representation of racial relations in Kim. It addresses the illustrations in the first Macmillan edition and the descriptions of the Wheel of Life for playing an important role in Kipling’s characterisation of Indians, their relations to English characters and Kipling’s own position with reference to Eastern forms of art. This article adopts an interdisciplinary methodology that includes multimodality, cultural and postcolonial studies theories and literary criticism. It argues that racial representations  in Kim remain unresolved, torn between Orientalism and syncretism, the product of a complex writer divided between his political views that placed East and West as separate and irreconcilable entities and an imaginative force that overcame racial and geographical boundaries.