Paradise Lost: Wilderness and the Limits of Western Escapism
Paradise Lost: Wilderness and the Limits of Western Escapism
This chapter discusses how the idealization of primitive life in the novela de la selva lightly veils a consciousness of the Hobbesian reality of the jungle as a milieu where life is ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ — a fact which becomes self-evident when the narrators finally succumb to the horrors of the wilderness. The thwarting of the urban travellers' aspirations for immersion in spiritual truths and adventure in the South American tropics destabilizes European narratives of primitivism and presents the tropical forest not as a commodity for urban self-actualization, but as a menacing and potentially deadly, postcolonial space.
Keywords: primitive life, novela de la selva, urban travellers, primitivism, tropical forest, jungle
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