pt. 1. A social history of solitude: Antiquity and the Middle Ages -- L'Ancien régime: agreeable wilderness, pleasant solitude -- Modern times -- pt. 2. Solitude in the twentieth-century French novel: Du côté de chez Swann: the unknowable other -- La Condition humaine: solitude or solidarity? -- Journal d'un curé campagne: the saint's Gethsemane -- La Chute: the egocentric individual -- Le Planétarium: solitude in the world of commodities.
