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Glossary of Key Terms with Pronunciation Key |
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Naïve and Sentimental |
A distinction laid out in the essay "On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry" (1795) by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), arguing that poets are either naïve (like Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Goethe: original, pure, authentic, directly in touch with nature) or sentimental (derivative, civilized, removed from nature). The opposition has persisted, turning up in John le Carré's novel The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971) and John Adams's Naïve and Sentimental Music (1997–98).
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Noble Savage |
The idea that primitive human beings are naturally good and that whatever evil they develop is the product of the corrupting action of civilization. Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals" (1580) stated the basic concept. Dryden, in The Conquest of Granada (1671), has a character say: I am as free as nature first made man, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave (1688) portrayed a noble savage in chains. But the greatest impulse toward the doctrine of a natural nobility came from Rousseau's Émile (1762): "Everything is well when it comes fresh from the hands of the Maker; everything degenerates in the hands of Man." The idea was used extensively by Chateaubriand, and it became a commonplace of romanticism. The continuing popularity of Kipling's The Jungle Book and Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan (who is also the literally noble Lord Greystoke) is testimony to the durability of the idea. |
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