Long TextExercise 63 of 81

The desire to be alone is, in historical terms, a remarkably recent phenomenon. For the vast majority of human existence, solitude was not a condition one sought but one that was inflicted - by exile, by imprisonment, by the death of one's community. The hermit and the anchorite existed at the margins of medieval…

• How was solitude primarily regarded in pre-modern cultures?
• What combination of factors enabled the transformation of attitudes toward solitude?