Imperium of the soul offers a new interpretation of the creative work of some of the most well-known British imperialists, including Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, John Buchan, Edward Elgar, Rider Haggard and Herbert Baker.
Despite their association with obsolete and discredited political creeds, the creative work of these individuals continues to captivate new generations of readers and critics. This interdisciplinary study considers their enduring fascination, with part of the explanation to be found in the way they played with the notion of the divided psyche made popular in their time by the revolutionary psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Each of them perceived a powerful analogy between the real-world project of imposing imperial rule on 'savage subjects' and the struggle of individual egos to keep a lid on savage impulses percolating up from the subconscious. Much of the power of their creative work derives from their exploration of this oddly thrilling and disturbing notion that the most cultivated and civilised Europeans harboured deep within themselves wildly transgressive desires that might be repressed but never purged. Their deeply held conservative political allegiances have tended to obscure the many ways in which the subjects of this book shared key ideas of twentieth-century modernism.