Feral children books | General books about feral children

FeralChildren.com says 'Feral children': girls and boys who supposedly got lost in the wilderness, to reappear only after years of isolation. From the early 1970s, when Truffaut's 'Wild Child' hit the cinemas, they have never completely vanished from public interest. But at the same time comparatively little is known about a complete era's preoccupation with them. Driven by the works of Defoe, Rousseau or Linnaeus, people believed they had finally found the key to man's nature. Feral children became a staple of enlightenment thought, a central topic for popular press and scientific literature alike. Reception and assessment of the cases were far from unanimous from the start. They became hopelessly confusing when authors additionally began to use them for their specific purposes. This publication tries to sketch that meandering path. Herder and Kant, Schreber, Zimmermann and Blumenbach all had their part in creating an astonishing story of adventurous ideas, daring theoretical constructs, fierce debates - and all too often scientific self-deception.

FeralChildren.com says An updated version of Williams' PhD thesis The Mother Wolf, including a chapter that examines the historical accounts for any evidence that children have ever truly been nurtured by animals.

Publisher blurb: Wolves have been despised and persecuted by humans for centuries. They were eradicated completely in England by about 1509 and in Scotland and Ireland in the mid-eighteenth century. Yet superstitions and folklore continue to fuel a fear of wolves in modern day Britain - even though many of these popular beliefs are inaccurate. In "Howls of Imagination", Dr Paul Williams describes how these beliefs have arisen, and contrasts them with known information about wolves - and the relatively rare number of wolf attacks on humans. Why did Christian allegories give wolves a 'bad press'? How did popular literature breed a hybrid lore by mixing legends about real wolves with myths about werewolves? Have children really been reared by wolves? And, above all, should we afraid of 'the big bad wolf' or simply consign such ideas to the scrap bin of erroneous stereotypes? "Howls of Imagination" reveals how folklore and myth can create and sustain misleading ideas while simultaneously offering a more factual understanding of this iconic animal of the wilderness.

FeralChildren.com says Au sein des quatre grandes catégories historiques d'enfants sauvages recueillis par une nourrice animale, à savoir, enfants-loups, enfants-singes, enfants-ours et enfants-gazelles, tous les cas de ces deux dernières sont faux, abandonnant la rarissime authenticité à la louve et à la femelle orang-outan. Certes, la forêt fut le plus vaste orphelinat de l'histoire de l'humanité, certes, la louve présente fréquemment un désordre endocrinien, la pseudogestation ou "grossesse nerveuse", qui pourrait la conduire à allaiter un nouveau-né abandonné dans les bois, toutefois, cette potentialité biologique, qui est formelle, subit souvent le désaveu des archives ou d'une enquête sur le terrain. Un cas présentant une certaine authenticité — un jeune garçon grièvement brûlé lors de l'enfumage de sa tanière, en 1872 —est contemporain de famines majeures : lors, en faisant expirer les parents par millions et en multipliant le nombre d'enfants en état d'abandon, des drames d'une telle ampleur, à l'exemple des guerres, ont favorisé cette potentialité, car l'adoption d'un nourrisson par une louve en état de pseudogestation est un accident statistique relevant de la loi des grands nombres.

FeralChildren.com says An exhaustive reference work, featuring several children that don't appear on this site.
This description copyright © 2006 Editions Gallimard: "Pourquoi les enfants que l'on dit avoir été adoptés par des animaux, qui ont connu le traumatisme d'un isolement total dans la nature ou une claustration prolongée suscitent-ils tant de fascination ? D'où vient, par exemple, que la presse d'aujourd'hui ait trop rapidement tendance à parler d'enfant sauvage à propos de cas de maltraitance ou de marginalisation d'un jeune, quand l'anthropologie ne semble plus s'en préoccuper ? On n'a pas toujours ni partout parlé d'enfant sauvage. C'est surtout en Occident, pendant deux ou trois siècles (du XVIe au XVIIIe), qu'il est au coeur d'une recherche sur la nature de l'homme, sa sensorialité, sa stature, sa subsistance, la nécessité ou non de sa vie sociale, son esprit ou son langage. Qu'est-ce donc qui a pu faire émerger comme un modèle, impliquant l'ensemble des connaissances - philosophie, science politique, droit, histoire naturelle, médecine et psychologie -, ce qui n'était resté longtemps qu'une curiosité assez anecdotique et qui a fini par redevenir un fait divers ? se demande l'anthropologue Lucienne Strivay. Sans refaire une histoire critique des témoignages, ni trancher l'alternative sommaire entre sauvagerie et déficience mentale, elle entreprend ici l'archéologie conceptuelle de cette figure essentielle. Comment est-on passé de la fable, des mythes, des contes, des textes sacrés ou des hagiographies, ou encore des curiosités naturelles, au questionnement sur les origines : celles des langues, des sociétés, de la culture, de l'homme ? Comment les enfants sauvages ont-ils été utilisés par la pensée occidentale comme un instrument de projection jusqu'à représenter la faille ou la caution des valeurs de la culture ?"

FeralChildren.com says Essays on phenomenological encounters with the world, including one chapter on feral children, and a couple of chapters on animals and human-animal beings as well.

FeralChildren.com says Since the early seventeenth century, stories of encounters with strange children in unusual circumstances have been recorded, circulated, and reproduced in Europe and North America not simply as myths, legends, or good tabloid copy but as occurrences deserving serious scrutiny by philosophers and scientists. "Wild children" were seen as privileged objects of knowledge, believed to hold answers to fundamental questions about the boundaries of the human, the character and significance of civilization, and the relation between nature and culture, heredity and environment.
Through detailed readings of a wide variety of accounts, debates, and representations, Encounters with Wild Children explores the many different meanings these children were given and the varied responses they elicited. Adriana Benzaquén explains why wild children continue to haunt and fascinate Western scientists and shows how the knowledge they have generated in different disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy, linguistics, and sociology, has contributed to the shaping and reshaping of the modern understanding of "the child" and affected the social and institutional practices directed at all children in schools, welfare, mental health, and the law.

FeralChildren.com says The author, researching the story of Wild Peter, comes to believe that Peter is the first recorded case of autism: and then, his own son is diagnosed as autistic. This is the story of both boys.

FeralChildren.com says This book (volume 2) traces the true story of Marie Angélique Memmie LeBlanc. (Volume 1 is published under the title L'Enigme des enfants loups.)

FeralChildren.com says The title says it all, really: the author explains how affection in the first 18 months of a baby's life profoundly influences the development of the brain.

FeralChildren.com says A thorough review of virtually every known case. An excellent reference work.

FeralChildren.com says Douthwaite looks at the lives of the most famous "wild children" of 18th-century Europe, showing how they open a window onto European ideas about the potential and perfectibility of mankind. She offers a glimpse into beliefs about the difference between man and beast, and the means once used to civilize the uncivilized.

FeralChildren.com says Brief details of historical cases plus extensive chapters on Peter, Victor, Kamala and Amala, Memmie Leblanc and Kaspar Hauser

FeralChildren.com says Includes the chapter The Familiar Other and Feral Selves: Life at the Human/Animal Boundary which is reproduced on this site.

FeralChildren.com says Examines the many ramifications of the case of Kaspar Hauser, and offers many insights into the social, political and intellectual life of Biedermeier Germany.

FeralChildren.com says A comprehensive resource on Kaspar Hauser, featuring new translations of Feuerbach and other contemporary accounts, and plenty of other material including an essay on Kamala and Amala.

FeralChildren.com says An English translation by Caroline Newton.

FeralChildren.com says Mexican author Roger Bartra skillfully weaves a fascinating history of the "wild man" myth and its constant recurrence in Western societies.

FeralChildren.com says Humans have long shown a wish to connect with the silent minds around them. In assembling and interpreting the compelling tales in this book, Candland offers us a new understanding not only of the animal kingdom, but of the very nature of humanity, and our place in the great chain of being.

FeralChildren.com says A comprehensive resource on Kaspar Hauser, featuring new translations of Feuerbach and other contemporary accounts, and plenty of other material including an essay on Kamala and Amala.

FeralChildren.com says A discussions of the effects of heredity and environment, a review of historial cases, and reproductions of Itard's original works on Victor of Aveyron.

FeralChildren.com says Shattuck helps modern readers form many of the questions that still haunt parents, special education teachers, guidance counselors, and all students of human behavior to this day: How do children acquire language? How do deaf and mute children learn? Can children who have been neglected or abused ever learn to trust the world?

FeralChildren.com says The compelling story of a young woman's emergence into the world after spending her first 13 years strapped to a chair, and her rescue and exploitation by scientists hoping to gain new insight into language acquisition, and, indeed, just what it means to be human.

FeralChildren.com says The compelling story of a young woman's emergence into the world after spending her first 13 years strapped to a chair, and her rescue and exploitation by scientists hoping to gain new insight into language acquisition.

FeralChildren.com says The compelling story of a young woman's emergence into the world after spending her first 13 years strapped to a chair, and her rescue and exploitation by scientists hoping to gain new insight into language acquisition.

FeralChildren.com says Presents a compelling case for a new psychological model of the human mind, one based on the division and interaction between a hard-wired evolved half and a language-oriented learned half.

FeralChildren.com says In chapter 2, Natural Wit, Classen looks at three cases of feral children to answer questions about the effect of the environment on sensory perception, and how the sense are conditioned by, and might develop outside of, culture.

FeralChildren.com says "This work reports on the linguistic research carried out through studying and working with Genie. Through in-depth psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research, I have attempted to explore just what this case can tell us about some of the questions of interest for linguists and psycholinguists: Is there a critical period for language development? If so, what kind of language development is possible beyond the critical period?" Dr Curtiss.

FeralChildren.com says Through extensive research into hundreds of original documents, Maclean sets out to resolve whether Kamala and Amala are genuine feral children or a hoax. A thorough and detailed history of Singh and the wolf girls with plenty of photos.

FeralChildren.com says A masterly work that covers the complete history of Victor of Aveyron, and places it in the context of the development of special needs education and the philosophies of the time. In a readable style that combines narrative with material from primary sources, Lane lays out the errors that Itard made in his attempts at educating and socialising Victor.

FeralChildren.com says A feral man anthology; fiction and fact about humans raised by animals.

FeralChildren.com says The screenplay of the film Wild Child, (translated from the French) with 80 stills and a "how I made…" introduction.

FeralChildren.com says A reproduction of La Condamine's book about Memmie LeBlanc, with much additional material and a comprehensive preface by Tinland.

FeralChildren.com says Homo ferus et Homo sylvestris, de l'animal à l'homme.

FeralChildren.com says Extensive coverage of Kamala and Amala based on Singh's own diaries, details of many historical cases quoting primary sources, and an 1833 translation of Feuerbach's Kaspar Hauser.

FeralChildren.com says Translated from the German.