{"id":574,"date":"2020-05-05T10:56:09","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T09:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/?p=574"},"modified":"2020-05-05T10:59:14","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T09:59:14","slug":"david-vincents-book-a-history-of-solitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/?p=574","title":{"rendered":"David Vincent&#8217;s book A History of Solitude"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Professor David Vincent has published <a href=\"https:\/\/politybooks.com\/bookdetail\/?isbn=9781509536580\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/politybooks.com');\">A History of Solitude<\/a>. <span class=\"desc_span\">Solitude has always had an ambivalent status: the capacity to enjoy being alone can <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">make sociability bearable, but those predisposed to solitude are often viewed with <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">suspicion or pity. <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">Drawing on a wide array of literary and historical sources, David Vincent explores how <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">people have conducted themselves in the absence of company over the last three <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">centuries. He argues that the ambivalent nature of solitude became a prominent <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">concern in the modern era. For intellectuals in the romantic age, solitude gave respite <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">to citizens living in ever more complex modern societies. But while the search for <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">solitude was seen as a symptom of modern life, it was also viewed as a dangerous <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">pathology: a perceived renunciation of the world, which could lead to psychological <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">disorder and anti-social behaviour. David <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">Vincent explores the successive attempts of religious authorities and political <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">institutions to manage solitude, taking readers from the monastery to the prisoner\u2019s <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">cell, and explains how western society\u2019s increasing secularism, urbanization and <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">prosperity led to the development of new solitary pastimes at the same time as it made <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">traditional forms of solitary communion, with God and with a pristine nature, <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">impossible. At the dawn of the digital age, solitude has taken on new meanings, as <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">physical isolation and intense sociability have become possible as never before. With <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">the advent of a so-called loneliness epidemic, a proper historical understanding of the <\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">natural human desire to disengage from the world is more important than ever.\u00a0<i>A History of Solitude<\/i> is t<\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">he first full-length account of its subject<\/span><span class=\"desc_span\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>David Vincent has also written a blog post <a href=\"https:\/\/socialhistory.org.uk\/shs_exchange\/on-epidemics-and-loneliness\/\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/socialhistory.org.uk');\">On Epidemics and Loneliness<\/a> for The Social History Society, drawing on his research.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/9781509536580.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-575\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/9781509536580.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"188\" height=\"284\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor David Vincent has published A History of Solitude. Solitude has always had an ambivalent status: the capacity to enjoy being alone can make sociability bearable, but those predisposed to solitude are often viewed with suspicion or pity. Drawing on a wide array of literary and historical sources, David Vincent explores how people have conducted &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/?p=574\" class=\"more-link\" >Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;David Vincent&#8217;s book A History of Solitude&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":576,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}