Abstract
This chapter draws on the propositions of posthumanism to examine how children’s fiction celebrates and problematises wildness. By focussing on the hybrid figure of the child–animal (the ‘wild child’), I interpret this complex figure as posthuman, arguing that it metaphorically embodies the fears and anxieties contemporary Western societies harbour for the Other. Postioned in a borderland, the wild child marks a productive tension between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism: its free, unencumbered state reflects ecocentrism acceptance to all forms of life, but runs counter to anthropocentricism’s view of human superiority and prejudices. The focus texts for the discussion are The Wild Boy by Mordecai Gerstein (1998), The Savage by David Almond (2008), and I Was a Rat! by Philip Pullman (1999).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Almond, D. (2008). The Savage. London: Walker Books.
Badmington, N. (2010). Posthumanism. In: B. Clarke & M. Rossini eds., The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science. London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 374–384.
Braidoitti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brown, C. S. (1995). Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism: The Quest for a New Worldview. The Midwest Quarterly, 36(2), pp. 191–202.
Derrida, J. (2008). The Animal That Therefore I Am. Translated by David Wills. Chicago: Fordham University Press.
Gerstein, M. (1998). The Wild Boy. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Golding, W. (1954). Lord of the Flies. London: Faber & Faber.
Haraway, D. J. (2008). When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Jaques, Z. (2015). Children’s Literature and the Posthuman: Animal, Environment, Cyborg. New York: Routledge.
Kahn, P. H., & Hasbach, P. H. (2013). Introduction. In: P. H. Kahn & P. H. Hasbach eds., The Rediscovery of the Wild. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. xi–xxxvi.
Kidd, K. B. (2004). Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kipling, R. (1894). The Jungle Book. London: Macmillan.
Newtown, M. (2010). Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children. London: Faber and Faber.
Pullman, P. (1999). I Was a Rat! New York: Random House Children’s Books.
Romøren, R., & Stephens, J. (2002). Representing Masculinities in Norwegian and Australian Young Adult Fiction. In: J. Stephens ed., Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinities in Children’s Literature and Film. New York: Routledge, pp. 216–233.
Sendak, M. (1963). Where the Wild Things Are. New York: Harper & Row.
Smol, A. (1996). The “Savage” and the “Civilized”: Andrew Lang’s Representation of the Child and the Translation of Folklore. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 21(4), pp. 177–183.
Wolfe, C. ed. (2003). Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mallan, K. (2018). The Wild Child: Posthumanism and the Child–Animal Figure. In: Goga, N., Guanio-Uluru, L., Hallås, B., Nyrnes, A. (eds) Ecocritical Perspectives on Children's Texts and Cultures. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90497-9_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90497-9_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90496-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90497-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)