primitivism and the cult of ‘the noble savage’ have been closely associated with the 18th cent., though in some aspects they are descended from the classical concept of the Golden Age, and preceded by individual works like Behn's
Oroonoko. Primitivism took the form of a revolt against luxury (see Goldsmith's
The Deserted Village), against sophistication (see Colman's
Inkle and Yarico, Cumberland's
The West Indian, Mrs
Inchbald's The Child of Nature,
Bage's Hermsprong, all works which stress the superiority of a simple education), and, in terms of critical theory, against
neo-classicism. (See
Hurd;
Gray, T.)
Primitivism proposed a belief in man's natural goodness, and in the inevitable corruptions of civilization. Interest in the educational and philosophic theories of
Rousseau was accompanied by great enthusiasm for travel writings and for real-life South Sea Islanders, Eskimos, Lapplanders, Negroes, etc. There was also much curiosity about the phenomenon of the ‘wild child’ which found recent versions in
Kipling's Mowgli, E. R.
Burroughs's Tarzan, and Truffaut's film
L'Enfant sauvage. Home-grown primitives were also in demand, and ‘peasant’ poets such as
Duck and
Yearsley were taken up by eager patrons: the notorious fake primitives
Macpherson and
Chatterton enjoyed a considerable vogue. They in turn were stimulated by the scholarly researches of
Percy and
Ritson, who revived an interest in early English poetry. One of the most important figures in the movement was Gray, whose poems
The Bard and
The Progress of Poesy reflect his own interest in and feelings for the non-classical past. It was in the cause of liberty that writers such as
Cowper and T.
Day defended the Noble Savage and attacked the slave trade.
The ideas embodied in primitivism were in many ways continued in the
Romantic movement, with its stress on nature, freedom (both political and artistic), and the natural man. In recent years writers like
Said have taken exception to the Eurocentric implications of the concept of primitivism, and the subject has been redefined in the context of
post-colonial studies. See also
slavery, the literature of.
