Table of Contents 1 Christian solitude 11 2 Bounded solitude in Augustine's Confessions 32 3 The humanist tradition : Petrarch, Montaigne, and Gibbon 43 4 Rousseau's myth of solitude in Reveries of the solitary walker 81 5 Thoreau at Walden : "soliloquinzing and talking to all the universe at the same time" 105 6 Twentieth-century varieties of solitary experience 129 7 Thomas Merton and solitude : "the door to solitude opens only from the inside" 160 8 Solitude, writing, and fathers in Paul Auster's The invention of solitude 185 Conclusion : the value of solitude 199 · · · · · · (收起)