Wild Girl, Natural Man, and the Monster
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18th century
A01=Julia V. Douthwaite
animation
anthropology
Author_Julia V. Douthwaite
Category=JHMC
Category=NHD
Category=NHT
Category=QDH
champagne
childhood
childrearing
civilization
creation
defoe
education
enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethics
experiment
fear
feral
history
human nature
humanity
literature
mad scientist
man and beast
mary shelley
monster
monstrosity
nonfiction
optimism
pedagogy
perfectibility
perfection
rationality
reason
romanticism
rousseau
sade
science
society
uncivilized
utopia
wild children
Product details
- ISBN 9780226160559
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jun 2002
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This study looks at the lives of the most famous "wild children" of eighteenth-century Europe, showing how they open a window onto European ideas about the potential and perfectibility of mankind. Julia V. Douthwaite recounts reports of feral children, such as the wild girl of Champagne (captured in 1731 and baptized as Marie-Angelique Leblanc), and offers a fascinating glimpse into beliefs about the difference between man and beast, and the means once used to civilize the uncivilized. A variety of educational experiments failed to tame these feral children by the standards of the day. After telling their stories, Douthwaite turns to literature that reflects upon similar experiments to perfect human subjects. Her examples range from utopian schemes for progressive childrearing to philosophical tales of animated statues, from revolutionary theories of regenerated men to Gothic tales of scientists run amok.
Encompassing thinkers such as Rousseau, Sade, Defoe, and Mary Shelley as well as many lesser-known diarists, journalists, scientists, and novelists, Douthwaite shows how the Enlightenment conceived of mankind as an infinitely malleable entity, first with optimism, then with growing apprehension. Exposing the darker side of eighteenth-century thought, she demonstrates how advances in science gave rise to troubling new ethical concerns, as parents joined scientists and politicians in trying to perfect mankind - with disastrous results.
Julia V. Douthwaite is associate professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Exotic Women; Literary Heroines and Cultural Strategies in Ancien Regime France.
