Boredom

Abstract

This Element challenges prevailing views of boredom as a modern phenomenon and as an experience occurring inside our minds. It discusses the changing perspectives on boredom within psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis on both sides of the Atlantic in the last 100 years. It also analyzes visual and textual material from France, Germany, Britain, Argentina and Spain, which illustrates the kinds of social situations, people and interactions that have been considered tedious or boring in the past five centuries. Examining the multidirectional ways in which words like ennuyeux, 'tedious', langweilig, aburrido and 'boring' have been transferred between different cultural contexts (to denote a range of interrelated feelings that include displeasure, unease and annoyance), it demonstrates how the terms, concepts and categories through which individuals have experienced their states of mind are not simply culture-bound. They have also travelled across geographical and linguistic barriers, through translation, imitation and adaptation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.