Super Glossary

Noble Savage

Entertainment / Literature / Noble Savage: Typically, the depiction of Amerindians, indigenous African tribesmen, and Australian bushmen results in two sharply opposing stereotypes as follows: (1) When 'civilized' races dwell in close proximity to these 'savages,' they may feel threatened--sometimes with good reason--if the tribe is cannibalistic, warlike, or competes for local resources. In such situations, literature almost always depicts the race as inferior to the civilized race and dangerously superstitious, violent, lazy, or irrational. An example would be the depiction of Indians in Hawthorne's stories--satanic skulkers on the outskirts of good Puritan homes. (2) If the writer is only passing through an area rather than competing for resources, or if the writer lives some safe distance away, the second and opposing tendency is for him or her to romanticize the alien culture, accenting its positives and projecting his or her cultural desires on the other. This second stereotype, a literary motif, depicts exotic, primitive, or uncivilized races and characters as being innately good, dignified, and noble, living harmoniously with nature. They are thought to be uncorrupted by the morally weakening and physically debilitating effects of decadent society. The motif goes back as far as the Christian tales of Adam and Eve--the idea that innocent living in lush wilderness is equivalent to existing in a state of Edenic goodness. Montaigne develops the idea in his essay Of Cannibals, as does Aphra Behn in Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave (c. 1688). However, it is in the time of the Enlightenment that the Noble Savage truly becomes a center of attention. Rousseau writes in Emile (1762), 'Everything is well when it comes fresh from the hands of God,' but he adds, 'everything degenerates in the hands of Man.' The idea was also popular in Chateaubriand's work, in Dryden's Conquest of Granada, and especially in the writings of the Romantic poets. We see early hints of it in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man (Epistle I, lines 99-112), but Pope remains contemptuous of the native's 'untutored mind,' even as he admires tha native's state of contentment with nature.
Search Google for Noble Savage: