The noble savage image framed colonized peoples as noble in their wildness

Evidence

Another variant of the same argument can be found in the debate about the “noble” versus the “ignoble savage.” The English poet John Dryden provides one of the famous images of the “noble savage”: When wild in woods the noble Savage ran. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 651

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the noble-versus-ignoble savage binary as another representational schema in the colonial vocabulary.
• XREF: connects to: Civilization’s bondage breeds longing that becomes worship of a transfigured nature; Colonial peoples were naturalised alongside their land as savage nature to be tamed — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 404; The picaresque tradition interrogates who counts as human when the poor are animalized — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 181 (+1 more)