ABSTRACT
Kipling's evocation of the jungle has long been famous, especially the passionate and primitive world of the rukh, in which he brings Mowgli to manhood. The Algerian novels of Bertrand, Randau and Leblond are perhaps the most successful in achieving a shift of perspective from metropolitan France. The German writer Hans Grimm, argued that Kipling's vision of imperialism was so all-encompassing that Kipling was able to relate every situation he wished to describe to the overall well-being of the British Empire. Grimm's approach to Kipling may or may not be found persuasive. It clearly echoes the political ambitions which we saw behind the German exotic and travel novels of the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Grimm's own colonial writing provides an example of the stylistic results of allowing the imagination to be inspired by imperialism as a political idea rather than by the reality of the colonies. Grimm's facile picture of the paradise of colonial nature belonged within unrealistic settlement plans.
