Phenomenology of Space and Time in Rudyard Kipling's Kim: Understanding Identity in the Chronotope

This research work intends to investigate the ways in which the changing perceptions of landscape during the nineteenth century play out in Kipling’s treatment of Kim’s own phenomenological and epistemological questions by examining the indelible influence of space—geopolitical, narrative, and imaginative—on Kim’s identity. By interrogating the extent to which maps encode certain ideological assumptions, the work assesses the problematic issues of Kim’s multi-faceted identity through an exploration of both geographical and narrative landscapes and the various chronotopes—Bakhtin’s term for coexisting frameworks of time and space—that ultimately provide a new reading of identity-formation in Kim.