Volume 27, Number 8 · May 15, 1980
Hunting for Humanity
By Robert Darnton
The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
by Roger Shattuck
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 220 pp., $10.95
Nearly two centuries have passed since the wild boy known as Victor was captured in Aveyron, France, and trotted around Paris on a leash as a specimen of natural man. Although he was the talk of the town for a few months in 1800, he had been forgotten by the time he died, half-tame and mute, in 1828. Why does he still haunt our consciousness? Why in the last few years has he aroused such interest among psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, linguists, literary scholars, educators, and artists?
Review, 2698 words
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