SOURCE: Buchanan, Michelle. “Savages, Noble and Otherwise, and the French Enlightenment.” Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 15 (1986): 97-109.

In the following essay, Buchanan claims that the invention and idea of the Noble Savage became a notable element of literature, fiction, and drama in eighteenth century France because the belief was important in the thought of the French Enlightenment.

The notion of the French philosophes' humanistic view of the savage continues to find wide acceptance, along with the belief in the capital role played by Montaigne and Rousseau in the development and concretization of the concept of the Noble Savage. Both commonplaces, having too long served as a springboard for studies of philosophical, aesthetic, political, and economic issues, should now take their place among the myths which underpin the thesis of the nobility of Man in Nature.

The belief in the importance of the Noble Savage in the thought of...