This book explores the spatial, material, and affective dimensions of solitude in the late medieval and early modern periods, a hitherto largely neglected topic. Its focus is on the dynamic qualities of “space” and “place”, which are here understood as being shaped, structured, and imbued with meaning through both social and discursive solitary practices such as reading, writing, studying, meditating, and praying. Individual chapters investigate the imageries and imaginaries of outdoor and indoor spaces and places associated with solitude and its practices and examine the ways in which the space of solitude was conceived of, imagined, and represented in the arts and in literature, from about 1300 to about 1800. Contributors include Oskar Bätschmann, Carla Benzan, Mette Birkedal Bruun, Dominic E. Delarue, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Christine Göttler, Agnès Guiderdoni, Christiane J. Hessler, Walter S. Melion, Raphaèle Preisinger, Bernd Roling, Paul Smith, Marie Theres Stauffer, Arnold A. Witte, and Steffen Zierholz.

This volume examines how and why many early modern pictures operate in an ekphrastic mode.

In early modern China, Jesuit missionaries associated with the male elite of Confucian literati in order to proselytize more freely, but they had limited contact with women, whose ritual spaces were less accessible. Historians of Catholic evangelism have similarly directed their attention to the devotional practices of men, neglecting the interior spaces in Chinese households where women worshipped and undertook the transmission of Catholicism to family members and friends. Nadine Amsler's investigation brings the domestic and devotional practices of women into sharp focus, uncovering a rich body of evidence that demonstrates how Chinese households functioned as sites of evangelization, religious conflict, and indigenization of Christianity. The resulting exploration of gendered realms in seventeenth-century China reveals networks of religious sociability and ritual communities among women as well as women's remarkable acts of private piety. Amsler's exhaustive archival research and attention to material culture reveals new insights about women's agency and domestic activities, illuminating areas of Chinese and Catholic history that have remained obscure, if not entirely invisible, for far too long. The open access publication of this book was made possible by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.