A biography of loneliness : the history of an emotion
Alberti, Fay Bound, 1971-2019
Book
Total copies: 1
A Biography of Loneliness is the first history of its kind to be published in English, offering a radically new interpretation of loneliness as an emotional language and experience. Using letters and diaries, philosophical tracts, political discussions, and medical literature from the eighteenth century to the present, historian of the emotions Fay Bound Alberti argues that loneliness is not an a historical, universal phenomenon. It is, in fact, a modern emotion: before 1800, its language did not exist. As Alberti shows, the birth of loneliness is linked to the development of modernity: the all-encompassing ideology of the individual that has emerged in the mind and physical sciences, in economic structures, in philosophy and politics. While it has a biography of its own, loneliness impacts on people differently, according to their gender, ethnicity, religion, outlook, and socio-economic position. A Biography of Loneliness charts the emergence of loneliness as a modern emotional state. From social media addiction to widowhood, from homelessness to the oldest old, from mall hauls to massages, loneliness appears in all aspects of 21st-century life. Yet we cannot address its meanings, let alone formulate a cure, without attention to its complex, protean history.
Main title:
A biography of loneliness : the history of an emotion / Fay Bound Alberti.
Author:
Alberti, Fay Bound, 1971-, author
Edition:
First edition.
Imprint:
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.©2019.
Collation:
xvi, 298 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN:
9780198811343 (hardback)
Dewey class:
158.2
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
734937