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

In the critical context of renewed interest in the works of Rudyard Kipling by key scholars inpostcolonial studies, this article investigates the role of the illustrations and textually mediatedimages in the representation of racial relations in Kim(1901). It addresses the illustrations in thefirst Macmillan edition and the descriptions of the Wheel of Life that play such an important role in Kipling’s characterisation of Indians, their relations to English characters and Kipling’sown position with reference to Eastern forms of art. In doing so, it adopts an interdisciplinarymethodology that includes multimodality, functional linguistics, cultural and postcolonial studies theories and literary criticism. It argues that racial representations in Kim remain unre-solved between Orientalism and syncretism; the product of a complex writer divided betweenhis political views that placed East and West as separate and irreconcilable entities and an imagi-native force that overcame racial and geographical boundaries.