Wild Enlightenment: The Borders of Human Identity in the Eighteenth Century (review)

276 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION17:2 excellence. Cheek is perhaps more successful and illuminating in her localized discussions oftopics such as die ideal brodiel (a real tour de force) dian in her theoretical efforts aimed at "placing sex" in die new global world of die later eighteentb century, tiiough her arguments are always substantiated and provocative. Conversely, one might have wished diat Turner had offered more in the way of a theoretical overview than the almost unrelieved "Deluge" of local libertinage and radicalism he so experdy serves up and analyses. Finally, I wish to call attention to die lamentable omission ofbibliographies (apparendy current university press policy for Cambridge, Stanford, and odiers) . Robert A. Erickson University of California, Santa Barbara Richard Nash. WildEnlightenment: TL·Borders ofHuman Identity in tL· Eighteenth Century. Charlottesville: University ofVirginia Press, 2003. 248pp. US39.50. ISBN 0-8139-2165-1. While general consent would be given to die idea diat the struggle over notions of "nature" and "wilderness" and "savagery" was central to the Enlightenment and to eighteenth-century thought more generally, litde attention has been paid to die exemplars of wildness who were examined and assessed by writers and scientists of die period, constituting a complex alter ego (die "wild man") to the abstraction of the "citizen of Enlightenment ," who comes to embody die ideal inhabitant of die emerging public sphere. Richard Nash unearths die stories of these "wild men" and demonstrates in convincing detail die impact diey had on literary texts that are now too often read in ignorance of historical context. Nash's century runs from 1699 to 1818, but the book focuses intensively on particularyears: 1726, 1773, and 1816. Its "wild men" include Tyson's orangoutang , "Lord Peter," the WildYoudi ofHameln, and Victor ofAveyron—die best known of feral children, in part because of François Truffaut's film L'Enfant sauvage. The literary texts illuminated by WildEnlightenmentinclude Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Frankenstein. The critical thrust of Wild Enlightenment is historicist in the sense diat it encourages us to understand die terms ofearly eighteenth-century debates before the consolidation ofterminology (and diought) diat we associate widi Linnaeus. "Human" was still a deeply contested term, and Nash's book brilliandy illuminates some of die debates around die notion, debates diat REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS277 laid die foundations ofmodern andiropology, in particular, and ofdie whole raft of human sciences more generally. As an aid to diinking beyond die binary divisions diat often limit consideration of diese issues, Nash tentatively offers a version ofGreimas's semiotic square. Here the opposition between Enlightenment citizen (social/rational) and feral children (solitary/passionate) is mediated by orang-outangs and Yahoos (social/passionate) and castaways (solitary/rational) (8). This square recurs periodically, never forcing die audior's thought in particular directions but often clarifyingjust what is at stake. More than half die book focuses intensively on 1726, die year in which "Lord Peter," the wild youdi who had been found running naked through die forests ofHanover, was presented at die court ofGeorge I. Several pamphlets alluded to Lord Peter, and Nash offers some detailed readings of die ways in which his case was interpreted and, in particular, ofdie role it played in die emergence of a political opposition during diat summer. Several of die pamphlets have clear Scriblerian associations: Nash argues diat It cannot Rain but itPours may well have been written by Swift, an attribution common in die eighteentb century but usually rejected in recentyears. He also supports the contested attribution of another litde-known work about Peter, Mere Nature Delineated, to Defoe. The arguments about attribution are carefully made, but Nash's purposes are in no way limited to claims about audiorship. He uses bodi discussions about Peter to illuminate die great work of that year, Gulliver's Travels, and die slighdy earlier Robinson Crusoe. The penultimate chapter takes as its central moment the famous meeting between DrJohnson and Lord Monboddo, whose views were the butt of Johnson's humour for his steadfast beliefin die kinship ofhumans and apes (often made with reference to the figure of Peter). As with his earlier reading of Edward Tyson's Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris, Nash makes sense of Monboddo's...