Rudyard Kipling — Modern Critical Views

Bloom's Modern Critical Views

by Harold Bloom (Editor)

This book brings together a representative selection of the best criticism available upon the writings of Rudyard Kipling. The essays are reprinted here in the chronological order of their original publication. I am grateful to Peter Childers for his skill and devotion in helping me edit this volume.

My introduction first suggests that Kipling, despite appearances, had a profound affinity to the aesthetic vision and solipsistic nihilism of Walter Pater, and then traces both these qualities and their antitheses in Kim, Kipling's strongest single work. The chronological sequence of criticism begins with Randall Jarrell's overview of Kipling's achievement as a story writer, which is followed here by two loving appreciations of Kim, by the British novelist Angus Wilson and by Irving Howe. Donald Davie, poet and critic, reconsiders Kipling's imperialism as a mode of puritanism, while Zohreh T. Sullivan subtly unveils the sexual anxieties and divided loyalties that help to constitute the literary aspects of that imperialism.

In what seems to me a breakthrough into a new mode of Kipling criticism, David Bromwich brings together two of the best stories, "Wireless" and "Dayspring Mishandled," with the best poems and Kim so as to illuminate the daemonic basis of Kipling's art. Elliot L. Gilbert relates the death of Kipling's son in World War I to the poet-novelist's later art and life, both of which invest deeply in a certain metaphoric silence. In this book's final essay, Robert L. Caserio reads The Light That Failed as Kipling's deliberate poetics of failure, and speculates in regard to Kipling's influence upon Conrad. Caserio, like Bromwich and Gilbert, teaches us that there is still a largely unknown and profound writer to be uncovered in Kipling.

First published February 1, 1988

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.

Reviews

[m · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book.
68,000 words

The chapters aren't numbered but here's its contents:

1 Editor’s Note (290 words) — good

2 Introduction (3000 words) — very good
by Harold Bloom

3 On Preparing to Read Kipling (6900 words) — very good
by Randall Jarrell

4 Kim and the Stories (5400 words) — good
by Angus Wilson

5 The Pleasures of Kim (4700 words) — great essay
by Irving Howe

6 A Puritan’s Empire: The Case of Kipling (4500 words) — interesting negative take
by Donald Davie

7 Kipling the Nightwalker
by Zohreh T. Sullivan

8 Kipling’s Jest (11,200 words) — good but taxing
by David Bromwich

9 Silence and Survival in Kipling’s Art and Life
by Elliot L. Gilbert

10 Kipling in the Light of Failure
by Robert L. Caserio