|
A noble savage is a literary stock character who embodies the concept of an idealized indigene, outsider, or "other" who has not been "corrupted" by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. In English, the phrase first appeared in the 17th century in John Dryden's heroic play ''The Conquest of Granada'' (1672), wherein it was used by the son of a Christian prince, believing himself a Spanish Muslim, in reference to newly-created man. "Savage" at that time could mean "wild beast" as well as "wild man". The phrase later became identified with the idealized picture of "nature's gentleman", which was an aspect of 18th-century sentimentalism. The noble savage achieved prominence as an oxymoronic rhetorical device after 1851, when used sarcastically as the title for a satirical essay by English novelist Charles Dickens, whom some believe may have wished to disassociate himself from what he viewed as the "feminine" sentimentality of 18th and early 19th-century romantic primitivism.〔See Grace Moore, "Reappraising Dickens's 'Noble Savage'", ''The Dickensian'' 98:458 (2002): 236-243. Moore speculates that Dickens, although himself an abolitionist, was motivated by a wish to differentiate himself from what he believed was the feminine sentimentality and bad writing of female philanthropists and writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, with whom he, as a reformist writer, was often associated.〕 The idea that humans are essentially good is often attributed to the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, a Whig supporter of constitutional monarchy. In his ''Inquiry Concerning Virtue'' (1699), Shaftesbury had postulated that the moral sense in humans is natural and innate and based on feelings, rather than resulting from the indoctrination of a particular religion. Shaftesbury was reacting to Thomas Hobbes's justification of an absolutist central state in his ''Leviathan'', "Chapter XIII", in which Hobbes famously holds that the state of nature is a "war of all against all" in which men's lives are "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short". Hobbes further calls the American Indians an example of a contemporary people living in such a state. Although writers since antiquity had described people living in pre-civilized conditions, Hobbes is credited with inventing the term "State of Nature". Ross Harrison writes that "Hobbes seems to have invented this useful term."〔''Locke, Hobbs, and Confusion's Masterpiece'', Ross Harrison, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 70.〕 Contrary to what is sometimes believed, Jean-Jacques Rousseau never used the phrase ''noble savage'' (French ''bon sauvage''). However, the character of the ''noble savage'' appeared in French literature at least as early as Jacques Cartier (coloniser of Québec, speaking of the Iroquois) and Michel de Montaigne (philosopher, speaking of the Tupinamba) in the 16th century. ==Pre-history of the noble savage== Gaius Cornelius Tacitus 98 A.D. De Origine et situ Germanorum (Germania) has been described as a predecessor of the modern noble savage concept which started in the 17th and 18th centuries in western European travel literature.〔Paradies auf Erden?: Mythenbildung als Form von Fremdwahrnehmung : der Südsee-Mythos in Schlüsselphasen der deutschen Literatur Anja Hall Königshausen & Neumann, 2008 〕 During the late 16th and 17th centuries, the figure of the indigene or "savage"—and later, increasingly, the "good savage"—was held up as a reproach to European civilization, then in the throes of the French Wars of Religion and Thirty Years' War. During the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (1572), some ten to twenty thousand men, women, and children were massacred by Catholic mobs, chiefly in Paris, but also throughout France. This horrifying breakdown of civil control was deeply disturbing to thoughtful people on both sides of the religious divide. In his famous essay "Of Cannibals" (1580),〔(Essay "Of Cannibals" )〕 Michel de Montaigne—himself a Catholic—reported that the Tupinambá people of Brazil ceremoniously eat the bodies of their dead enemies as a matter of honour. However, he reminded his readers that Europeans behave even more barbarously when they burn each other alive for disagreeing about religion (he implies): "One calls 'barbarism' whatever he is not accustomed to." In "Of Cannibals", Montaigne uses cultural (but not moral) relativism for the purpose of satire. His cannibals are neither noble nor especially good, but not worse than 16th-century Europeans. In this classical humanist view, customs differ but people everywhere are prone to cruelty, a quality that Montaigne detested. The treatment of indigenous peoples by the Spanish Conquistadors also produced a great deal of bad conscience and recriminations.〔Anthony Pagden, ''The Fall of the Natural Man: the American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology. Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies.''(Cambridge University Press, 1982)〕 The Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas, who witnessed it, may have been the first to idealize the simple life of the indigenous Americans. He and other observers praised their simple manners and reported that they were incapable of lying. European angst over colonialism inspired fictional treatments such as Aphra Behn's novel ''Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave'' (1688), about a slave revolt in Surinam in the West Indies. Behn's story was not primarily a protest against slavery; rather, it was written for money, and it met readers' expectations by following the conventions of the European romance novella. The leader of the revolt, Oroonoko, is truly noble in that he is a hereditary African prince, and he laments his lost African homeland in the traditional terms of a classical Golden Age. He is not a savage but dresses and behaves like a European aristocrat. Behn's story was adapted for the stage by Irish playwright Thomas Southerne, who stressed its sentimental aspects, and as time went on, it came to be seen as addressing the issues of slavery and colonialism, remaining very popular throughout the 18th century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「noble savage」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|