The value of solitude : the ethics and spirituality of aloneness in autobiography / John D. Barbour.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barbour, John D.

Series:

Studies in religion and culture (Charlottesville, Va.)

Studies in religion and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Solitude.

Solitude--Religious aspects.

Autobiography--Religious aspects.

Autobiography.

Physical Description:

237 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2004.

Summary:

The Value of Solitude both traces the persistence and vitality of the theme of solitude in autobiography and shows how the literary form and structure of autobiography are shaped by ethical and religious reflection on aloneness. This work should appeal to scholars in the fields of religious studies and theology, to literary critics and specialists in autobiography, and to readers interested in the experience of solitude and its moral and spiritual significance.

Contents:

Christian solitude

Bounded solitude in Augustine's Confessions

The humanist tradition : Petrarch, Montaigne, and Gibbon

Rousseau's myth of solitude in Reveries of the solitary walker

Thoreau at Walden : "soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time"

Twentieth-century varieties of solitary experience

Thomas Merton and solitude : "the door to solitude opens only from the inside"

Solitude, writing, and fathers in Paul Auster's The invention of solitude

Conclusion: The value of solitude.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [215]-234) and index.

ISBN:

0813922887

0813922895

OCLC:

54881973