Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Encounters with Wild Children: Temptation and Disappointment in the Study of Human Nature
ISBN: 9780773576117
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / McGill-Queen''s University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Feral children;

Since the early seventeenth century, stories of encounters with strange children in unusual circumstances have been recorded, circulated, and reproduced in Europe and North America not simply as myths, legends, or good tabloid copy but as occurrences deserving serious scrutiny by philosophers and scientists. "Wild children" were seen as privileged objects of knowledge, believed to hold answers to fundamental questions about the boundaries of the human, the character and significance of civilization, and the relation between nature and culture, heredity and environment.

Adriana S. Benzaquén is assistant professor, history, Mount Saint Vincent University.Adriana S. Benzaquén is assistant professor, history, Mount Saint Vincent University.