“Come on, poor babe:
Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens
To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say,
Casting their savageness aside, have done
Like offices of pity.”
[Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, Act II, scene 3, line 185.]

Tales of children being adopted and nurtured by wolves, bears, monkeys, and other animals crop up with remarkable regularity. As the mediæval world gave way to the modern, the wodewose or wild man of the woods shifted from an archetype of chaos, insanity and heresy to one of natural harmony and enlightenment, culminating in Rousseau’s idea of the Noble Savage. But the wild man was both savage and sublime, an image of desire as well as punishment.