In a controversial article onthe life and fiction of Charles Dickens, George H. Lewes ponders the inexplicable preference of readers for the novelist's too-simplistic characters over the more complex characters of other writers. He finds an answer in the primitive reaction to fine art: “To a savage there is so little suggestion of a human face and form in a painted portrait that it is not even recognized as the representation of a man” (“Dickens” 150). The implication, it would seem, is that readers turn to Dickens because they are similarly incapable of appreciating more refined modes of art. Today the remark reads as gratuitous and insulting to readers, to Dickens, and to the other cultures Lewes stereotypes as savage. At the same time, the casual nature of the passage also suggests that it reflects commonly held beliefs about primitive life, beliefs we do not have but that Lewes and his readers took for granted. He was clearly safe in assuming such a body of common knowledge, for many other articles in theFortnightly Review(in which Lewes's article appeared in 1872) had similar references to primitivism. Reading through the journal issues of the time, the extent to which anthropological concepts had escaped the covers of books on primitive society and taken up residence in the pages of review essays on contemporary issues – from history, to life in the colonies, to life in Britain itself – is striking. In its print context, the comment about savages and art is less isolated and inexplicable than it is representative of a broad turn to the topic of primitivism in social commentary and analysis during the 1870s.

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原始批评与小说：GH LEWES 和 HIPPOLYTE TAINE 谈狄更斯

在一篇有争议的文章中查尔斯·狄更斯的生平和小说，乔治·H·刘易斯思考了读者对小说家过于简单化的人物的莫名偏好，而不是其他作家更复杂的人物。他在对美术的原始反应中找到了答案：“对于野蛮人来说，在一幅画中几乎没有人脸和形式的暗示，以至于它甚至不被认为是一个人的代表”（“狄更斯”150） . 这似乎意味着读者转向狄更斯是因为他们同样无法欣赏更精致的艺术模式。今天，这句话对读者、狄更斯以及刘易斯对野蛮人的刻板印象的其他文化来说，是无端和侮辱的。同时，段落的随意性也表明它反映了人们对原始生活的普遍看法，我们没有但刘易斯和他的读者认为理所当然的信念。他显然可以安全地假设这样一个常识体系，因为在许多其他文章中每两周回顾（其中刘易斯的文章出现于 1872 年）对原始主义也有类似的提及。通读当时的期刊，人类学概念在多大程度上摆脱了原始社会书籍的封面，并占据了当代问题的评论文章的页面——从历史到殖民地生活，再到生活英国本身 - 是惊人的。在其印刷背景下，关于野蛮人和艺术的评论与其说是对 1870 年代社会评论和分析中原始主义主题的广泛转向的代表，不如说是不那么孤立和莫名其妙的。