ABSTRACT
The emergence of loneliness, as a modern phenomenon and global phenomenon that is both historically conditioned and culturally bound, may serve as a marker for a certain kind of historical transition in different parts of the world. In this light, excavating other genealogies beyond the English-speaking West is necessary for a comprehensive—and non-Eurocentric—history of a global affliction. This chapter is an attempt to address this problem by exploring two traditions of vernacular language poetry in South Asia, in Bengali and Marathi. In doing so, it considers how emotions history may be useful for periodization in historical analysis, as well as the ethical and analytical pitfalls of seeking pre-modern genealogies for (post)colonial phenomena like loneliness.
