THE MYTH OF THE NOBLE/GOOD SAVAGE
POST 1: THE MYTH OF THE NOBLE/GOOD SAVAGE The term "the noble savage" brings us back to the 17th and 18th centuries , when the autochthones and natives embodied the ideal of the intrinsic goodness due to the fact that they were not considered as civilized communities. Therefore indigenes could not have been "corrupted" or depraved by the latent flaws and depravity of civilisation . This myth takes its origins from John Dryden's heroic play The Conquest of Granada (1672) in which this expression appears for the first time but it only became a concrete concept of ennoblement during the 18th century romanticism with the turn of phrase "nature's gentleman". Centuries later, as this conception is promptly associated to Rousseau's premise about the state of nature , even if he never used this exact words to define human on its essence. And we can also notice that his thesis diverges sl