We return once more to the native wild man to point out the influence which the reestablishment of the time dimension in the mythology of the Golden Age had upon opinions about him. It was in the Renaissance that the wild man of native folklore, who had so faithfully accompanied his civilized brother through the involutions and contortions of his history, found himself for the first time relegated to the past and treated as a creature that had become extinct; a view which originated in scholarly circles, but gradually percolated to the peasants and burghers who were the mainstay of wild-man lore.
This opinion was held by the scholars who prepared the pro-gram for Charles V's entry into Bruges and who presented the wild man as the earliest inhabitant of Flanders. The same idea is ex-pounded in Gorboduc, a pre-Shakespearian drama, where the wild men are identified with the early Britons prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasion." And it was later expanded in the light of nineteenth-century historicism, when in the millenary celebration of 1886 in Ripon, England, the wild men were allowed to show themselves as the earliest prehistoric aborigines, the antecedents even of the Druids and Romans." Wherever this view was held, the mythology of the wild man was emptied of all pristine valuations and these were replaced by local pride or nationalist sentiment. No wonder therefore that in modern time, with its romantic regard for pre-history and its disregard for value, this attitude should have won adherents, not only among Swiss and Tyrolean villagers, but also among a few scholars as well." After what has been said about the origin of the wild man and his mythology in general, we need not insist that this explanation is, to put it mildly, implausible.
Read the above book and answer:
1- What is the attitude of the Wildman to women, according to Bernheimer? What can it not be? Why?
2- Bernheimer outlines three versions of a myth in which a Wildman abducts a woman. What are they?
3- What distinguishes the Wildman from the Incubus according to to Bernheimer?
4- Berheimer argues that the abduction of the woman by the Wildman can also be understood as a metaphor for what? In light of this reading the voyage to the lair of the Wildman becomes a journey to where?
5- What Greek legend does Bernheimer see as a template for the abduction of the woman by the Wildman?
6- According to Bernheimer though this may happen what are the long term results of such a transformation for the Wildman? What happened to the Wildman Merlin once he was tamed by the touch of a woman, for example?
7- According to Bernheimer the myth of the Wildman was most popular among what social classes? Upper or Lower? What do you make of this?