The history of loneliness

In the period from the XVIII to the XXI century, the attitude to loneliness has changed more than once: it was seen in it the source of bliss and self -knowledge, then a dangerous pathology, and in recent decades in some countries they began to talk with anxiety about the occurreed "epidemic of loneliness". To understand the historical prerequisites of this social phenomenon, historian David Vincent offers to look at him from a cultural and sociological point of view. What is loneliness and how does it differ from solitude? How did church and state institutions try to take control of it? What role did the secularization of society and urbanization play in the formation of new ideas about loneliness? The book introduces the history of many places and practices of voluntary and forced solitude - from monasteries to single cameras, from round -the -world voyages alone to closed "bubbles", in which smartphones and headphones are immersed today ... David Vincent - historian, phd, teaches at Open University (OU) and Kila University