Editing Noble savage (section)

==Cultural stereotype==
===The Roman Empire===
In Western literature, the Roman book ''[[Germania (book)|De origine et situ Germanorum]]'' (''On the Origin and Situation of the Germans'', 98 [[Common Era|CE]]), by the historian [[Tacitus|Publius Cornelius Tacitus]], introduced the anthropologic concept of the ''noble savage'' to the Western World; later a [[cultural stereotype]] who featured in the exotic-place tourism reported in the European [[travel literature]] of the 17th and the 18th centuries.<ref>''Paradies auf Erden?: Mythenbildung als Form von Fremdwahrnehmung : der Südsee-Mythos in Schlüsselphasen der deutschen Literatur'' (2008) Anja Hall Königshausen & Neumann, p. 0000.</ref>

===Al-Andalus===
The 12th-century [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] novel ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan|The Living Son of the Vigilant]]'' (''Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān'', 1160), by the polymath [[Ibn Tufail]], explores the subject of [[natural theology]] as a means to understand the material world. The protagonist is a ''wild man'' isolated from his society, whose trials and tribulations lead him to knowledge of Allah by living a rustic life in harmony with Mother Nature.<ref name=Attar>[[Samar Attar|Attar, Samar]], ''The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl's Influence on Modern Western Thought'' (1989), Lexington Books, {{ISBN|0-7391-1989-3}}.</ref>

===Kingdom of Spain===
In the 15th century, soon after [[Discovery of America|arriving to the Americas]] in 1492, the Europeans employed the term ''savage'' to dehumanise the ''indigènes'' (noble-savage natives) of the newly discovered "[[New World]]" as ideological justification for the [[European colonization of the Americas]], called the Age of Discovery (1492–1800); thus with the [[Dehumanization|dehumanizing]] stereotypes of the ''noble savage'' and the ''indigène'', the ''savage'' and the ''wild man'' the Europeans granted themselves the right to colonize the natives inhabiting the islands and the continental lands of the northern, the central, and the southern Americas.<ref>Borsboom, Ad. ''The Savage in European Social Thought: A Prelude to the Conceptualization of the Divergent Peoples and Cultures of Australia and Oceania'' (1988) KILTV, p. 419.</ref>

The [[conquistador]] mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the [[New Spain|Viceroyalty of New Spain]] (1521–1821) eventually produced bad-conscience recriminations amongst the European intelligentsias for and against colonialism.<ref>Anthony Pagden, ''The Fall of the Natural Man: the American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology. Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies.''(Cambridge University Press, 1982)</ref> As the Roman Catholic Bishop of [[Chiapas]], the priest [[Bartolomé de las Casas]] witnessed the enslavement of the ''indigènes'' of New Spain, yet idealized them into morally innocent noble savages living a simple life in harmony with Mother Nature. At the [[Valladolid debate]] (1550–1551) of the moral philosophy of enslaving the native peoples of the Spanish colonies, Bishop de las Casas reported the noble-savage culture of the natives, especially noting their plain-manner [[Etiquette|social etiquette]] and that they did not have the social custom of telling lies.

===Kingdom of France===
In the intellectual debates of the late 16th and 17th centuries, philosophers used the racist stereotypes of the ''savage'' and the ''good savage'' as moral reproaches of the European monarchies fighting the [[Thirty Years' War]] (1618–1648) and the [[French Wars of Religion]] (1562–1598). In the essay "[[Of Cannibals]]" (1580), Michel de Montaigne reported that the [[Tupinambá people]] of Brazil ceremoniously eat the bodies of their dead enemies, as a matter of honour, whilst reminding the European reader that such ''wild man'' behavior was analogous to the religious barbarism of [[Death by burning|burning at the stake]]: "One calls ‘barbarism’ whatever he is not accustomed to."<ref>[http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/montaigne.html Essay "Of Cannibals"]</ref> The academic [[Terence Cave]] further explains Montaigne's point of [[moral philosophy]]:

{{blockquote|text=The cannibal practices are admitted [by Montaigne] but presented as part of a complex and balanced set of customs and beliefs which "make sense" in their own right. They are attached to a powerfully positive morality of valor and pride, one that would have been likely to appeal to early modern codes of honor, and they are contrasted with modes of behavior in the France of the wars of religion, which appear as distinctly less attractive, such as [[torture]] and barbarous methods of execution.<ref>Cave, Terence. ''How to Read Montaigne'' (London: Granta Books, 2007), pp. 81–82.</ref>}}

As philosophic reportage, "Of Cannibals" applies [[cultural relativism]] to compare the civilized European to the uncivilized noble savage. Montaigne's anthropological report about [[Human cannibalism|cannibalism]] in Brazil indicated that the Tupinambá people were neither a noble nor an exceptionally good [[People|folk]], yet neither were the Tupinambá culturally or morally inferior to his contemporary, 16th-century European civilization. From the perspective of [[Classical liberalism]] of Montaigne's humanist portrayal of the [[Convention (norm)|customs]] of honor of the Tupinambá people indicates [[Western philosophy|Western philosophic]] recognition that people are people, despite their different customs, traditions, and codes of honor. The academic David El Kenz explicates Montaigne's background concerning the violence of customary morality:

{{blockquote|In his ''Essais'' {{omission}} Montaigne discussed the first three wars of religion (1562–63; 1567–68; 1568–70) quite specifically; he had personally participated in [the wars], on the side of the [French] royal army, in southwestern France. The [anti-Protestant] [[St. Bartholomew's Day massacre]] [1572] led him to retire to his lands in the Périgord region, and remain silent on all public affairs until the 1580s. Thus, it seems that he was traumatized by the massacre. To him, cruelty was a criterion that differentiated the Wars of Religion [1562–1598] from previous conflicts, which he idealized. Montaigne considered that three factors accounted for the shift from regular war to the carnage of civil war: popular intervention, religious demagogy, and the never-ending aspect of the conflict. {{omission}}

He chose to depict cruelty through the image of hunting, which fitted with the tradition of condemning hunting for its association with blood and death, but it was still quite surprising, to the extent that this practice was part of the [[Aristocracy|aristocratic]] way of life. Montaigne reviled hunting by describing it as an urban massacre scene. In addition, the man–animal relationship allowed him to define [[virtue]], which he presented as the opposite of cruelty. {{omission}} [As] a sort of natural benevolence based on {{omission}} personal feelings.

Montaigne associated the [human] propensity to cruelty toward animals, with that exercised toward men. After all, following the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the invented image of Charles IX shooting Huguenots from the [[Louvre Palace]] window did combine the established reputation of the King as a hunter, with a stigmatization of hunting, a cruel and perverted custom, did it not?<ref>El Kenz, David. ''Massacres During the Wars of Religion'' (2007)[https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/massacres-during-wars-religion?cs=print David El Kenz,"Massacres During the Wars of Religion", 2007]</ref>}}

===Literature===
[[File:Southerne Oroonoko 1776 performance.jpg|thumb|upright|right|alt=Illustration of a 1776 performance of Oroonoko.|200px|In the stageplay ''Oroonoko: A Tragedy'' (1696), by Thomas Southerne, plot complications lead the protagonist Oroonoko to kill his beloved Imoinda.]]

The themes about the person and ''[[persona]]'' of the mythical noble savage are the subjects of the novel ''[[Oroonoko|Oroonoko: Or the Royal Slave]]'' (1688), by [[Aphra Behn]], which is the tragic love story between Oroonoko and the beautiful Imoinda, an African king and queen respectively. At [[Fort Amsterdam, Ghana|Coramantien]], Ghana, the protagonist is deceived and delivered into the [[Atlantic slave trade]] (16th–19th centuries), and Oroonoko becomes a slave of [[Plantation economy|plantation colonists]] in [[Surinam (Dutch colony)|Surinam]] (Dutch Guiana, 1667–1954). In the course of his enslavement, Oroonoko meets the woman who narrates to the reader the life and love of Prince Oroonoko, his enslavement, his leading a [[slave rebellion]] against the Dutch planters of Surinam, and his consequent execution by the Dutch colonialists.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Benítez-Rojo|first=Antonio|date=2018|title=The Caribbean: From a Sea Basin to an Atlantic Network|journal=The Southern Quarterly|volume=55|pages=196–206}}</ref>

Despite Behn having written the [[Popular culture|popular novel]] for money, ''Oroonoko'' proved to be political-protest literature against [[slavery]], because the story, plot, and characters followed the [[Narrative|narrative conventions]] of the European [[romance novel]]. In the event, the Irish playwright [[Thomas Southerne]] adapted the novel ''Oroonoko'' into the [[stage play]] ''Oroonoko: A Tragedy'' (1696) that stressed the [[pathos]] of the love story, the circumstances, and the characters, which consequently gave political importance to the play and the novel for the candid [[Representation (arts)|cultural representation]] of slave-powered European colonialism.