Killing Time. Ennui in Eighteenth-Century English Culture

Killing Time. Ennui in Eighteenth-Century English Culture

Blog Article

The article explores the meanings of ennui in eighteenth-century England.Based on text searches, it proposes that the French term ennui was adopted into everyday usage in England around the mid-century, and was from the 1770s onwards used to signify especially the temporal fr9225 aspects of the word, that is, boredom.Ennui was closely tied to social rank: it was thought to plague the wealthy if they had too much time on their hands.

Interestingly, ennui was not 2649-20 particularly gendered, but plagued both men and women.It was intrinsically related to lifestyles.A multitude of activities were proposed to avoid ennui, from reading to physical exercise.

Avoidance was a question of life and death: ennui could lead to moral collapse and ultimately to suicide, killing not only the body but also the soul.