Hermits have thrived in every major historical era, geography, culture, and society – from antiquity to the present, East and West, in deserts, forests,
and mountains, depicted in art, literature, and lore.
What are their motives?
Religious, spiritual, philosophical? Ethical, aesthetic, psychological? From a love of wilderness to a desire for the anonymity of life as a ‘hermit in the city.’ From an inkling about the universe to a desire for radical simplicity. The historical hermits have reflected all of these.
As Kahlil Gibran put it, ‘A hermit renounces the world of fragments to enjoy the world wholly, without interruption.’ Hermits want, as Thoreau proposed of himself, to ‘live deliberately.’
Within these pages, all these motives are explored, all the hermits considered: poets, sages, teachers, philosophers, the eccentric, pious, irreverent, sociable, reclusive, and wise – men and women. Hermits from India, China, Japan, and South Asia, huts, cells, and cabins, from the Middle East to Europe to the United States. The waning of hermits shifted the modern Western world to solitude. But the persistence of hermits, even today, is universal.
Table of Content
Preface
Introduction
PART I. The Western World: Antiquity and Middle Ages
Chapter 1. Eremitism in Western Antiquity
Chapter 2. Eremitism in Medieval Western Europe
Chapter 3. Eremitism in Eastern Europe, Ethiopia, West Asia
PART II. The Eastern World: Antiquity to the Present
Chapter 4. Eremitism in India, Tibet, and South Asia
Chapter 5. Eremitism in Ancient China
Chapter 6. Eremitism in Medieval Japan
PART III. The Western World: Renaissance to Romanticism
Chapter 7. Eremitism in the Renaissance
Chapter 8. Eremitism in the Romantic Era
PART IV. The Western World: 19th and 20th Centuries
Chapter 9. From Eremitism to Solitude: 19th Century
Chapter 10. Eremitism and Solitude: 20th Century
Chapter 11. Eremitism in Eastern Thought and Influence
Chapter 12. Hermits and Solitaries: Later 20th Century to the Present
Appendix. The Hermit’s Dwelling-place: Hut, Cell & Cabin
Bibliographical References
Index
About the author
Robert Rodriguez spent forty years as a librarian in university, college and public libraries. He is the founder of the Hermitary website (hermitary.com) and editor since its 2002 inception.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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