Introduction -- 1. Wild Children: establishing the boundaries of nature and science -- 2. The animated statue and the plasticity of mankind -- 3. Compromised idylls: natural man and woman encultured -- 4. Raising the rational child: real-life experiments and alternatives to Rousseau -- 5. Perfectibility in the revolutionary era: Utopian politics and dystopian fictions -- Epilogue: Monstrous imperfection
Summary
This study looks at the lives of the most famous 'wild children' of eighteenth-century Europe, showing how they open a window onto European ideas about the potential and perfectibility of mankind. Julia V. Douthwaite recounts reports of feral children such as the wild girl of Champagne (captured in 1731 and baptized as Marie-Angélique Leblanc), offering a fascinating glimpse into beliefs about the difference between man and beast and the means once used to civilise the uncivilised
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-301) and index
