This fact itself sheds light on the Tarzan mythos: something about the primitive history of our species, and of the world before our species arose, speaks to us.
Burroughs was also the author of The Land That Time Forgot (1918), which remains widely known – thought not as widely read – thanks to a series of film adaptations. The idea of leaving behind civilised society and returning to the primitive world of our primate ancestors among the jungle is a powerful one in many readers’ – and movie-goers’ – imaginations. Why has Tarzan endured as a fictional character, even if few people now read Burroughs’ original novels? There are arguably several reasons: he is the archetypal ‘noble savage’, a figure found throughout literature but perhaps most clearly and successfully typified by Burroughs’ hero. Whether Burroughs was aware of this is unknown. ‘Tarzan’, it turns out, is a Hebrew word that translates as ‘dandy, fop, or coxcomb’. (More information on the genesis of Tarzan can be found here and here.)īefore Burroughs settled on the name Tarzan for his feral hero, he considered two other names: Zantar (which is obviously very close to the eventual name) and Tublat Zan. However, his publisher turned it down and instead, Burroughs wrote his first Tarzan novel, in the process inventing one of the most instantly recognisable fictional characters of all time.
This has to go down in literary history as one of the more fortunate literary rejections: having been tasked with writing a medieval romance in the mould of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Burroughs dashed off The Outlaw of Torn (1927) in just two weeks. Burroughs, a budding writer at the time, came up with Tarzan because his previous story was rejected for publication. Before he became a successful writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs worked as a pencil sharpener salesman.
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