📗 Libro en inglés SAVAGE GIRLS AND WILD BOYS: A HISTORY OF FERAL CHILDREN

This is an account of feral children - those brought up with no human contact, sometimes raised by wild animals, unable to speak or perform many of the functions we consider human. The cases discussed include those of Kamala and Amala, twin girls reputed to have been brought up by wolves in India in the 1920s; Genie, a girl kept in a single room in New York; a boy raised in a hen house in Northern Ireland; and a boy found among wild dogs in Moscow. The book examines their lives and the experiences of those who ''rescued'' them, looked after them, educated them or abused them. As a child, literature professor Michael Newton (University College, London) was captivated by Tarzan movies and Kipling''s The Jungle Book. It''s only fitting, then, that his first book, Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children, would investigate the history of children raised by (among others) wolves, monkeys and wild dogs. If these children help us understand ''our continuing relationship with the savage image of ourselves'' they also serve as a useful mirror of society''s ills. As Newton argues, the medical treatments, therapeutic interventions, and general media hoopla following the discoveries of these children sharply reveal the intellectual and political fixations of their particular historical milieu from Victor, the ''Wild Child of Aveyron,'' in 1800, onward. As interesting as such stories are in themselves, however, Newton''s real strength lies in his ability to recognize how these children, seemingly helpless yet astonishingly self-contained, inevitably awaken our rescue fantasies and parental longings. Newton is a consummate storyteller, and this richly detailed study will work just as well outside of academe as within it.