'I want to be like you': Riffs on Kipling in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book

This article explores the intertextual relationship between Neil Gaiman and Rudyard Kipling. Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (2008) adapts or "riffs" on Kipling's two Jungle Books (1894-5) complicating Kipling's conventional representations of good and evil, as well as his const...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChildren's Literature Association Quarterly Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 164 - 189
Main Author Robertson, Christine
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.07.2011
Subjects
British & Irish literature
Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898)
Childrens novels
English literature
Gaiman, Neil
Ideology
Intertextuality
Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)
Victorian period
Visual artists
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Summary:This article explores the intertextual relationship between Neil Gaiman and Rudyard Kipling. Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (2008) adapts or "riffs" on Kipling's two Jungle Books (1894-5) complicating Kipling's conventional representations of good and evil, as well as his construction of individual identity. In exchange, Gaiman reads Kipling back to a contemporary audience, resurrecting him from the graveyard of Empire. By transforming Kipling's Victorian jungle into a Victorian graveyard set in the middle of 21 st century England, Gaiman re-contextualizes Kipling's value-system, suggesting to contemporary readers how we might now read or re-read Kipling while re-negotiating his imperialist politics.
ISSN:0885-0429
1553-1201
1553-1201
DOI:10.1353/chq.2011.0021