User:Kitkifwiki/sandbox

Article Evaluation (Notes on Feed Article)

First thing I noticed, second sentence under "Context," is how it's written "the feed allows people: to..." instead of "the feed allows people to: ..." which I want to edit for conciseness.

It also seems to simply go over the plot a lot, reviews the themes of corporate control, but lacks much else. Character descriptions are a little vague/lacking.

Don't see anything too biased, wasn't distracted, most of the information comes straight from the book and seems accurate from what I remember reading.

It's part of WikiProject Novels, rated C-class.

I agree with the others, there are outdated plans from another person's school project to update the page but the majority of that plan doesn't seem to have gone into effect, and the article is still very plot-heavy in form, with a lack of sources.

Outline for Improvement, Absalom, Absalom!

• what content would you want to contribute?
• what research steps would you take to get that information?
• what recommendations would you propose to the style or organization?

Similar to the Light in August page, I would add sections on the characters, the style or structure of the book, and themes. The page is mostly plot, and needs to do more to break down the book.

I would have to read the book, or at least find a summary of it elsewhere, backed up by others, that listed all the characters and gave me an idea of the arrangement of it.

The intro is very short, whereas other page intros usually offer a little more information on the overall plot of the book, general themes or styles, and the reception of importance of the book- so the intro could be expanded and more sections added.

Choose Team Topics Assignment

Four possible articles suggested by Noelle:

Jo's Boys. We could write the Lead, Background, and Reception by finding biographies of Alcott and scholarly articles from the Valparaiso University Library and from databases such as MLA.

Ruth Hall (novel). We could write Style, Background, and Publication History based on biographies of Fanny Fern, scholarly articles, newspapers, and encyclopedias.

Tarzan of the Apes. We could write a lead, Publication History, and Reception.

We could write part of an article about the Lanny Budd series by Upton Sinclair. We could include a Lead, Major Themes, and Reception, based on sources which we find.

Three possible articles from Kylie:

Coraline (novel)- We could write a lead and sections on reception and themes.

Foundation's Edge- We could write sections on themes, background, and characters- basically everything, as this page is mostly plot.

The Amber Spyglass- We could write a lead and sections on characters and themes.

Research through, as Noelle suggested, articles from the VU Library and databases that would give us information on critical receptions and major themes. Character lists can be drawn from the summary or from reading/skimming the book.

Chosen Articles:

Tarzan of the Apes

Coraline

We chose these two because they have a variety of sections available to research, more than the others, as well as- judging by initial searches- a decent amount of materials to research from, allowing us to write informatively despite not having read the books. We were less interested in the others because they had less choice available in sections we could add, and fewer relevant sources; in the case of Foundation's Edge, the convoluted nature of the book and its previous series meant that it would have been important to read it before being able to contribute meaningfully to the article. Similarly with The Amber Spyglass, writing up a section on characters would have made reading the book a crucial step in research.

We plan to edit and add to the leads on both articles, and develop sections on Themes and (Critical/Popular) Reception for Coraline, and Publication History and Reception for Tarzan. Our research will be conducted through external articles and journals that relate to the books, and if possible, through reading them; this seems like an important step in being able to add to the article, but due to time constraints and the nature of the assignment, it will be secondary. We will also make sure to refer to the style guide for guidance throughout the process.

Identifying Sources Assignment

We are writing the article Tarzan of the Apes.

We could write a Background section based on Taliaferro's Tarzan Forever and Watson's "Tarzan the Eternal." This section could examine literary influences on Burroughs, the personal life of Burroughs, and the motivation of Burroughs to write Tarzan of the Apes. The sources seem to emphasize Burroughs' interest in classical epic literature, such as the Aeneid, the difficulties which he experienced in trying to find an occupation which would help him to provide for his young family, and his attempt to write books despite his belief that they were low-quality and trashy.

We could write a Critical Reception section which examines recent journal articles. Because the criticism on the book seems extensive, perhaps we could focus on summarizing the main critical controversies. These controversies seem to cover race and sexuality as themes in Tarzan of the Apes. These themes seem to fit better in a Critical Reception section than in a Themes section because modern critics notice these themes. Readers of the book when it came out in 1912 would not have noticed these themes as much as modern critics because societal values, including those regarding race and sexuality, change over one hundred years. Although race and sexuality technically are themes, we probably should address them as Critical Reception before anyone tries to incorporate them into a larger and more comprehensive section of themes. If we address only the articles, Coghlan's "Absolutely Punk," Oklopčić's "Adapting the Adapted," and Tuhkanen's "Grotesquely Becoming;" as well as Vernon's book On Tarzan, we will summarize only a small portion of critical reception. We seem much less capable of writing a Themes section which encapsulates critical reception along with early twentieth-century views, themes which Burroughs consciously included, and the general themes of the text.

We could write a Popular Reception section based on Watson's "Tarzan the Eternal" and Speelman's "The History of Tarzan in Comics." Because "Tarzan the Eternal" comes from a the mainstream Smithsonian magazine and "The History of Tarzan in Comics" comes from a mainstream website, Cosmic Alliance, we could include material which seems relevant to popular culture. Because they come from a history-oriented source and a comics-oriented source, respectively, they provide different views on separate topics. The Smithsonian article seems more general and about Burroughs as a person, and the Cosmic Alliance article seems to specify styles of art in which illustrators tried to express the action and excitement of Tarzan of the Apes.

Should we focus more on writing a comprehensive section, such as Critical Reception, or should we write a little in several sections?

How many pages of the sources should we read?

Would anyone like to comment on the plan of action or the following bibliography?

The proposed bibliography follows:

Coghlan, J. Michelle.  “Absolutely Punk: Queer Economies of Desire in Tarzan of the Apes.” 

           Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers: From Charlotte Temple to The Da

           Vinci Code, edited by Sarah Churchwell and Thomas Smith.  London, England:

           Continuum, 2012, pp. 175-195.

Oklopčić, Biljana.  “Adapting the Adapted: Adapting the Adapted: The Black Rapist Myth in E.

           R. Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes and Its Film Adaptations.”  Anafora, vol. 4, no. 2,

           2017, pp. 313-331.

Speelman, Tom.  “The History of Tarzan in Comics.” Cosmic Alliance, 8 July 2016,

           http://comicsalliance.com/history-tarzan-comics/

Taliaferro, John.  Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan.  New

           York: Scribner, 1999.

Tuhkanen, Mikko. “Grotesquely Becoming: Tarzan’s Queer Hominization.”  Diacritics, vol. 44,

           no. 1, 2016, pp. 26-58.

Vernon, Alex.  On Tarzan. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008.

Watson, Bruce.  “Tarzan the Eternal.”  Smithsonian, vol. 31, no. 12, Mar. 2001, 62-72.

Berglund, Jeff. “Write, Right, White, Rite: Literacy, Imperialism, Race, and Cannibalism in Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan of the Apes.” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 27, no. 1, 1999, pp. 53–76. doi:10.1353/saf.1999.0011

Newsinger, John. “Lord Greystoke and Darkest Africa: the Politics of the Tarzan Stories.” Race & Class,

vol. 28, no. 2, 1986, pp. 59–71. doi:10.1177/030639688602800204

Griswold, Jerry. “The Legend and Literature of Tarzan.” John Hopkins University Press, 20 July 2016.

www.press.jhu.edu/news/blog/legend-and-literature-tarzan

Hillman, Bill. “Tarzan of the Apes.” Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute Site. www.erbzine.com/mag4/0483.html

Annotations

Hillman, Bill. “Tarzan of the Apes.” Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute Site. www.erbzine.com/mag4/0483.html

An encyclopedic source, this entry lists the publication history of Tarzan of the Apes, from 1912 to 1998, across magazines, paperbacks, and anthologies. It includes a brief summary and some analysis of the book in one section, which is copied from somewhere else. The rest of the page shows different covers for the book over the years, examples of Burrough's handwriting in manuscript and title pages, discusses the original contract for the book, with a picture, and collects various other images of old copies, newspapers, and signatures from the author. This source is useful thanks to the factual history and details it presents on the book, and objective as its goal is collect information rather than present a view. It also seems reliable, judging by the fact that it is dedicated officially to the author and his work on Tarzan, with picture proof of what it presents.

Given that this is a "fan" site, I don't think Wikipedia would see it as reliable, after all, fans have a bias. However, the publication history is "factual," meaning they are not advancing an argument. In the end, as long as you have enough other reliable sources, this potentially self-referential site might not bother other Wikipedia editors.Aschuet1 (talk) 19:33, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Oklopčić, Biljana.  “Adapting the Adapted: Adapting the Adapted: The Black Rapist Myth in E.

           R. Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes and Its Film Adaptations.”  Anafora, vol. 4, no. 2,

           2017, pp. 313-331.

Oklopčić argues that Tarzan of the Apes intrinsically contains racist themes, which subsequent movies enlarged, diluted, or erased. The racist idea of the "black rapist," a black male stereotypical figure who rapes white women, seems to have influenced Burroughs' writings. Early movie adaptions of Tarzan of the Apes emphasize the "black rapist" stereotype by replacing the fictional character, the ape Terkoz, with an indigenous African man, who attempts to rape the love interest of Tarzan, Jane. Later movie adaptions avoid the racist theme, likely because American, mainstream, popular culture now rejects it.

• We can emphasize the racist themes in the original text and the movies
• We can emphasize popular reception of Tarzan
• We can emphasize the idea that Tarzan is separate from the apes, similarly to how some white people viewed themselves as separate from the "black rapist" stereotype. Then, we can form a bridge to the argument of Tuhkanen, which emphasizes Tarzan's similarities to the apes, which he developed in order to survive.

Tuhkanen, Mikko. “Grotesquely Becoming: Tarzan’s Queer Hominization.”  Diacritics, vol. 44,

           no. 1, 2016, pp. 26-58.

Tuhkanen analyzes Tarzan of the Apes through the theories of Rousseau and other philosophers regarding civilization. He argues that the book portrays Tarzan as becoming civilized in both his ape-like actions and his human actions. Civilization is only a way of survival through adaption to environment. Tarzan and other characters perform actions which deviate from what Western civilization considers normal; however, the actions are a type of civilization because they allow humans to survive, despite their apparently perverted traits.

• We can emphasize adaption to the environment
• We can emphasize Western influences on Burroughs (this might work into a background page). This could link to the Watson article.

Watson, Bruce.  “Tarzan the Eternal.”  Smithsonian, vol. 31, no. 12, Mar. 2001, 62-72.

Watson examines the influence of Tarzan on popular culture. He writes for a popular audience, but writes in a professional style and addresses some elements of critical reception. He especially emphasizes potential influences on Burroughs' writing, such as his trying to find a job to support his family, and his love of epics, such as the Aeneid. Burroughs' influences and own view of Tarzan of the Apes as escapism sheds light on its popularity.

• Watson and Tuhkanen both write about rejection of civilization, Watson on the part of the readers, Tuhkanen on the part of Tarzan.
• No connection seems to exist between Oklopčić and Watson within these summaries. Maybe once we write, we will find connections. Perhaps we should not include the Watson in the critical reception section. If we do, maybe it should be by mentioning it as "popular perception of critical reception."

Berglund, Jeff. “Write, Right, White, Rite: Literacy, Imperialism, Race, and Cannibalism in Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan of the Apes.” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 27, no. 1, 1999, pp. 53–76. doi:10.1353/saf.1999.0011

Berglund argues that Burroughs sets up a correlation between literacy, whiteness, and civilization, contrasting these against cannibalism, as an extreme form of orality and a symbol of barbarism. Tarzan's moral instincts are sparked by reading the books in his parents' cabin, and he only attempts to communicate with white humans through writing; his literacy and growing westernization also give Tarzan authority, which Berglund connects to the idea of imperialism. Tarzan, though raised in the jungle, has an inherently civilized side brought out by literacy, as Burroughs suggests that social class, power, and literacy are related. Berglund also mentions how Tarzan fits into the American myth of a high-born person who lives their life while mistaken for someone low-born.

• This article also provides evidence of Burroughs's western influence, which would be useful in a potential Background section
• We can consider fear of the foreign, and the separation/civilization of groups based on different races and classes
• We can consider how his writing appealed to the audience of the day, especially American

Jurca, Catherine. "Tarzan, Lord of the Suburbs." Modern Language Quarterly, vol 57, no. 3, 1996, pp. 479-504.

Jurca explores the aspect of domestic preservation in Tarzan, in a reverse of the British imperialism view. Instead of Tarzan and his white companions imposing colonial rule over the jungle, Jurca explains that it is more about Tarzan, as an original settler of an area where humans had never set foot, trying to protect his home from savages. She parallels this with the attitude of Americans in the twentieth century, including Burroughs himself, who were alarmed by an influx of foreign immigrants; for them, the city abruptly became a jungle, and the suburbs were where white Americans retreated in an attempt to preserve their familiar ways of life. Tarzan, once realizing that the African villagers and low-class sailors are different from him, tries to protect his home, and his people -- mainly Jane -- from harm, establishing civilization through domesticism.

• We can delve into the American attitude and separation between the outsiders and the home
• We can emphasive the westernization and racism that influenced Burroughs

Vidal, Gore. “Tarzan Revisited.” The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal, edited by Jay Parini, Doubleday, 2008, pp. 17–23.

Gore takes a more nostalgic route than most of the other authors here, as he describes the way in which Tarzan is a daydream figure, the product of a "master dreamer" if not so much a master writer. People, he claims, when their real lives are not interesting enough, turn to daydreaming adventures in which they can dominate the environment that stifles them in reality. He mentions how popular the Tarzan books are- at the time the essay was written, in 1963, they had sold over 25 million copies in 56 languages, and were apparently ejoying a large revival. For Gore, this demonstrated the general desire to escape reality at that time and gain more personal agency.

• We can focus on how Tarzan has starred as a popular figure in the public due to his status as an adventurer
• We can note the numerical popularity of the books, and/or the fact that Gore loved them anough to read all of them as a child
• We can consider how Tarzan is a symbol of power

Coghlan, J. Michelle.  “Absolutely Punk: Queer Economies of Desire in Tarzan of the Apes.” 

Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers: From Charlotte Temple to The Da

           Vinci Code, edited by Sarah Churchwell and Thomas Smith.  London, England:

           Continuum, 2012, pp. 175-195.

Coghlan argues that Tarzan could unconsciously feel homosexual.  In the novel, he treats the French naval officer, Paul D’Arnot, similarly to how he treats Jane.  Jane marries someone other than Tarzan for money, and Tarzan relies on D’Arnot for money as they travel around the world.  Coghlan asserts that early readers of the novel described the ending as “punk,” or unmanly, because Tarzan does not marry Jane.

• We can tie the psychological criticism which Coghlan employs to the psychological criticism at which Gore hints when he claims that Americans liked the novel because it is a form of escapism.  This also links to the Watson piece, which is aimed towards a popular audience rather than an academic one.

• We can connect Coghlan’s analysis of Tarzan’s self-identity and the readers’ perceptions of his identity with most of the other pieces because they often examine Tarzan’s identity. 

•  Ex: Oklopčić claims that Tarzan represents white opposition to black people, especially the stereotypical “black rapist.”  Tarzan views himself the protector of Jane, and so do later film adaptions. 

• Ex: Tuhkanen argues that Tarzan represents human deviations which lead to civilization. Tarzan views himself as a simple creature who tries to survive through deviating from what might seem normal.

• Berglund claims that Tarzan resists eating the corpse of a black person whom he killed because he is civilized.  Coghlan also examines this scene, concluding that Tarzan might express unconscious homosexual desire through thinking about eating the black person.

Drafting

Section Outlines

Current proposal is two sections; a Background section and a Themes section.

I looked at the pages suggested by the style guide- Lord of the Rings, Halo Graphic Novel- for examples/ideas on how to write this.

Background/Influences- Burroughs's influences, personal life, and other motivations behind writing Tarzan of the Apes. Split into two shorter sections on the immediate (and shorter) background of the book, and the longer influences (on Burroughs himself)?

1. Love of Reading/Desire for Stories: Gore
   • "Most of the stories I wrote were the stories I told myself just before I went to sleep" (G 18).
   • Given an unsatisfactory reality, “he consoled himself with an inner world where he was strong and handsome, adored by beautiful women and worshipped by exotic races” (G 19).
   • Started reading pulp fiction for want of more stories and, disliking what was offered, decided to write his own (G 19).
2. Darwinian Beliefs: Berglund
   • “…his inherited instinct for right and wrong. His advanced Anglo-Saxon stock, which still courses through his arteries despite close to twenty years of jungle education, encodes for him a superior morality. This Darwinian survival of the most moral is continually repeated throughout the later parts of the novel” (B 58).
3. Early Life: Watson, Gore
   • Drifter until he was thirty-six, briefly served in the U.S. Cavalry, a gold miner in Oregon, a cowboy in Idaho, a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City; attempted several businesses that failed (G 18)
   • First wrote a serial about Mars, sold it. Tarzan’s magazine run in 1912 (filled up the entire magazine, they ran the entire story), published as a book in 1914
4. Westernization: Berglund, Jurca

Themes- Although we were concerned because the themes are mostly discussed by later authors, and people of the time would have regarded them differently, these themes are still an intrinsic part of the work. We could possibly also address the attitude differences toward these themes over the years.

1. Civilization/Becoming Civilized: Berglund, Tuhkanen
2. Escapism: Gore, Jurca?
   • Desire to escape reality into a daydream, to conquer the environment, “Pondering the life and success of Burroughs leads one to believe that a good many people find their lives so unsatisfactory that they go right on year after year telling themselves stories in which they are able to dominate their environment in a way that is not possible in this overorganized society (G 18).
   • “…imaginary worlds tend to be more Adlerian than Freudian: The motor drive is the desire not for sex (other briefer fantasies take care of that) but for power, for the ability to dominate one's environment through physical strength” (G 18).
   • Maybe throw in Jurca as well, there is something about Tarzan appealing to a society which has found itself in an undesirable place – Gore mentions a general sense of boredom and frustration and desire to dominate the environment, and Jurca talks about the American frustration with immigrants who seemed to be taking over, leading to the ‘natives’ wanting to dominate their spaces again.
3. Racism: Oklopčić
4. Imperialism: Jurca, Berglund
   • “Moreover, he suggests that Tarzan senses an inherent connection between the written word, the self-created English book and whiteness; he intuits that writing is a means of communication between white humans, not just between paper and reader” (B 60). (or racism?)

Rough Drafting

Background/Influences

Burroughs was influenced by a varied life and multiple careers, none of which lasted; he drifted until he was thirty-six, served in the U.S. cavalry, mined gold in Oregon, was a cowboy in Idaho, a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City, and an entrepreneur who never quite succeeded in several attempts at opening a business. An avid reader, he eventually turned to pulp fiction for new material but was greatly disappointed by what it offered; he decided to write his own instead. Influenced by ancient myths like the Aeneid and Romulus and Remus, and possibly the Jungle Book, his own imagination was nonetheless the greatest source, many of the stories that he told he had told to himself just before he went to sleep, and he never visited Africa. Tarzan first appeared in the All-Story magazine, which ran the entire length of the story and took up most of the magazine. Two years later, Tarzan was reprinted as a novel, and was reprinted multiple times in later years due to popularity.

(pretty much the whole section drawn from Vidal, except the bit about myths.)

Themes

Escapism- Burroughs told himself stories in order to get away from the real world to a more exciting place. Tarzan also appeals to a society which has found itself in an undesirable place and appeals to audiences as a powerful means of escaping that reality; Vidal talks about a general sense of boredom and frustration and desire to dominate the environment, and Jurca talks about the American frustration with immigrants who seemed to be taking over, leading to the ‘natives’ wanting to dominate their spaces again.

Civilization- A focus on Tarzan’s ability to read and write, which sets him apart from the apes, the African villagers, and the lower-class sailors which Berglund argues indicates a link between whiteness, class, and civilization. The books exerted a powerful influence over him (Burroughs 53) and he taught himself to write and thus recognized himself as a human for the first time. Jurca looks at how Tarzan defends his corner of civilization from the savages who want to despoil it, reflecting an early twentieth-century American attitude.

Heredity- although Tarzan was brought up in the jungle far from other humans, he is inexplicably drawn back to his parents’ cabin and the things he finds there and discovers a capacity for gentlemanly behavior around Jane despite no one teaching it to him (B 66). Never having had a problem with eating enemy apes before, he is suddenly overcome with revulsion when he considers eating one of the African men he kills and refuses to do so; Burroughs wrote, “thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence he was ignorant” (Burroughs 80). Burroughs explores how Tarzan could be genetically predisposed to acting in the civilized manner of what Burroughs saw as a superior man.

Also

stumbled across these: http://thejohncarterfiles.com/2013/08/edgar-rice-burroughs-origins-and-influences-a-deleted-chapter-from-john-carter-and-the-gods-of-hollywood/

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/t/taliaferro-tarzan.html?mcubz=0

“"I was mainly interested in playing with the idea of a contest between heredity and environment," he wrote in Writer's Digest twenty years after the first publication of Tarzan of the Apes. "For this purpose I selected an infant child of a race strongly marked by hereditary characteristics of the finer and nobler sort, and at an age at which he could not have been influenced by association with creatures of his own kind I threw him into an environment as diametrically opposite that to which he had been born as I might well conceive"” (NY article).

Background and Influences

Burroughs drifted across the United States until he was 36, working in multiple careers before publishing stories; these including a U.S. cavalryman, a gold miner in Oregon, a cowboy in Idaho, a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City, and an owner of several failed businesses. He decided to write his own pulp fiction after being disappointed by the reading material others offered, and worked in that capacity for four years before his first novel. Though The Jungle Book is sometimes cited as an influence on Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes, he claimed that his only inspiration was the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus. Tarzan first appeared in the All-Story Magazine, which ran the entire length of the story, and was published in 1914 as a novel.

Themes

Recent literary criticism often focuses on the identity of the eponymous protagonist of Tarzan of the Apes.  Literary critics, such as Jeff Berglund, Mikko Tuhkanen, J. Michelle Coughlan, Bijana Oklopčić, and Catherine Jurca examine the overlapping themes of Tarzan’s heredity, race, humanity, civilized behavior, and sexuality.

Heredity

Burroughs himself acknowledged the centrality of the theme of heredity in the novel. According to his biographer, John Taliaferro, he claimed in a Writer’s Digest, “I was mainly interested in playing with the idea of a contest between heredity and environment. For this purpose I selected an infant child of a race strongly marked by hereditary characteristics of the finer and nobler sort, and at an age at which he could not have been influenced by association with creatures of his own kind I threw him into an environment as diametrically opposite that to which he had been born as I might well conceive”. The scholar Jeff Burglund notices that although Tarzan was brought up in the jungle far from other humans, he is inexplicably drawn back to his parents’ cabin and the objects which he finds there. He discovers a capacity for gentlemanly behavior around Jane despite no one teaching it to him. Although the African tribes which he fights practice cannibalism, and he himself eats ape corpses, he suddenly feels revulsion when he considers eating one of the African men he kills. When he refuses to eat the African, Burroughs portrays "hereditary instinct” as the reason. Tarzan's genetic association with upper-class, Western civilization conditions his actions more than his violent environment, and Berglund claims that Tarzan could represent the stereotypical "scion of English stock" in colonialized countries. His racial superiority manifests itself through his behavior because it correlates with the ideals of Western civilization, whether he treats a woman politely or cannot force himself to eat an African man.

Racism

Bijana Oklopčić emphasizes the portrayal of race in Tarzan of the Apes. He claims that Tarzan represents white, male opposition to the “black rapist” stereotype which was prevalent in the Southern U.S. at the time of its publication because the language which describes apes parallels propaganda against people of African descent. Catherine Jurca similarly analyzes Tarzan as opposed to tolerating the presence of people of other races and classes in favor of preserving his own culture. The way that Tarzan defends his corner of civilization, his parents’ home, from the "savages" who want to destroy it, reflects an early twentieth-century American attitude; as darker-skinned immigrants flooded the country, especially urban areas, white Americans feared that their culture would be destroyed by newcomers who did not understand or care about it, and tried to protect the suburbs in the same way that Tarzan tries to protect his home.

Civilization

Tarzan’s jungle upbringing and eventual exposure to Western civilization form another common theme in literary criticism of the novel. Berglund notes that Tarzan’s ability to read and write sets him apart from the apes, the African villagers, and the lower-class sailors in the novel, and culminates in Tarzan recognizing himself as a human for the first time; moreover, he sees himself as a man who is superior to others unlike himself. Jeff Berglund argues that this realization exemplifies Burroughs' portrayal of whiteness and literacy as fundamental to civilization; Tarzan’s growth into a perfectly civilized person stems from his Western, white heritage, and learning to read and write.

However, Mikko Tuhkanen claims that the apparently civilized qualities of Tarzan, such as his interest in reading, threaten his survival as a human in the jungle. For Tuhkanen, Tarzan represents the fluidity with which humans should define themselves. He asserts, “[T]he human and the nonhuman become grotesquely indistinguishable” in the novel. Humans mistake apes for other humans, an ape tries to rape Jane, Tarzan finds a surrogate ape mother when he cries out like an ape, and he must act against his human instincts by jumping into a dangerous body of water in order to survive an attack from a lion. Because simian and human behavior blend, and because civilized habits seem to threaten human survival, Tuhkanen claims that humans must contradict the expectations of civilization regarding the characteristics of humans.  For Tukhanen, the novel exemplifies “queer ethics,” encouraging “perverse sexuality” along with other behaviors which Western civilization often discouraged.

Sexuality

J. Michelle Coughlan argues that Tarzan displays behavior which seems outside of the bounds of traditional manhood in her article “’Absolutely Punk: Queer Economies of Desire in Tarzan of the Apes.” Coughlan analyzes Burroughs’ fans complaints regarding the “punk ending” in order to prove that contemporary readers understood Tarzan’s renunciation of Jane as unmanly. Later, he rescues Paul D’Arnot from Africans, similarly to how he rescued Jane from rape: many of the same phrases and words describe both adventures (185-86). D’Arnot later supports the reluctant Tarzan financially, similarly to the monetary motivation for marriage which Jane considers. Coughlan suggests that the novel bends traditional Western gender roles; therefore, Tarzan unconsciously could feel homosexual desire for D’Arnot despite his apparent attraction for Jane, and D’Arnot could be treating Tarzan as a “kept m[a]n,” or paid sexual partner.

Escapism

Most of the stories that Burroughs wrote were stories that he told himself: given an unsatisfactory reality, “he consoled himself with an inner world where he was strong and handsome, adored by beautiful women and worshipped by exotic races”. The story especially served as a form of masculine escape. Tarzan also appealed to a society which has found itself in an undesirable position as a powerful means of escaping it: both for a general sense of boredom and frustration, and the twentieth-century American desire to reconquer a home perceived as lost. "In the eyes of contemporary man, huddled in large cities and frustrated by a restrictive civilization, Tarzan was a joyous symbol of primitivism, an affirmation of life, endowing the reader with a Promethean sense of power".

References ???

Oklopčić, Biljana.  “Adapting the Adapted: Adapting the Adapted: The Black Rapist Myth in E. R. Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes and Its Film Adaptations.”  Anafora, vol. 4, no. 2, 2017, pp. 313-331. ????

We don't need this- all the references are automatically at the bottom of the page, and only external links that aren't referenced in the page need to be separately listed. So no need for a bibliography or anything.

Additional Thoughts, with Article Posted

There is something I want to add to the Civilization section, about the way that Burroughs wrote encouragingly about nature, or about wanting to return to it... but now I can't track it down.

Anything else that we might add in? Other sources to support the Background section? I think the original plan on the Tarzan talk page mentioned something about him believing his own work was "trashy"? I don't know which source that was, though.