Any answer to this question has to come with the caveat that time, place and societal position will all inflect what pre-modern introversion might have looked like, and who might have experienced it. The monastic clergy, for example, will have had different opportunities in the regulation of social interaction than their secular counterparts. Note that I say different, not greater or fewer ̶ we often think of monasteries in terms of cells and scriptoria, but off course they also housed refectories and cloisters, and offered structured opportunities for communal devotion. The same sort of nuance needs to be brought to the differences in social experience between rural villages and bustling cities, between merchants and more static tradespeople, between the nobility of the earlier and later periods, etc. Some circumstances might seem counterintuitive – anchorites, for instance, could become hubs of village gossip despite their virtual entombment. There are countless such distinctions to be made that would affect whether or not a person could easily control their interaction with social communities, and what they could get up to when they were alone.

That said, I think that Geoffrey Chaucer’s frequent depictions of introverted experience and behaviour make for an interesting case study of the subject at a particular place and time. He writes about social interaction quite a lot (if interested in this, Strohm’s Social Chaucer remains the go-to, later built on by work from David Wallace and Marion Turner), but also about withdrawal from or reluctance to participate in that interaction. I should stress that Chaucer’s social world is anchored to a specific place and time; he was a member of late fourteenth-century London’s emerging urban middle class, and that dictates the sorts of social structures about which he writes – most famously the Canterbury pilgrims, a multifarious but recognisably bourgeois group. I’d also add that if Chaucer’s representation of introversion is based on personal experience, it never prevented his fairly successful career as civil servant, diplomat, and minor courtier. I don’t, however, think we should discount what he writes on the subject as total fiction.

In The House of Fame, the narrator (a version of the poet) is carried to the heavens by a talking eagle, who says that Jupiter has taken pity on the poet’s sheltered lifestyle (all quotation from the Riverside edition, translation my own):

And noght oonly fro fer contree

That ther no tydynge cometh to thee,

But of thy verray neyghebores,

That duellen almost at thy dores,

Thou herist neyther that ne this;

For when thy labour doon al ys,

And hast mad alle thy rekenynges,

In stede of reste and newe thynges

Thou goost hom to thy hous anoon,

And, also domb as any stoon,

Thou sittest at another book

Tyl fully daswed ys thy look;

And lyvest thus as an heremyte,

Although thyn abstynence ys lyte.

(HF 647–60)

And not only do no tidings come to you from afar, but from your very neighbours – who live just outside your door – you won’t hear anything at all. For when your work is done, and you’ve finished your accounts, instead of relaxation and new experiences, you go immediately to your house. And, as silent as a stone, you sit at yet another book until your countenance is dazed. And thus you live like a hermit – although you are less than abstemious!

There’s more than a passing resemblance here to the Clerk of The Canterbury Tales, who would rather have twenty books of Aristotle than fine robes (CT I 293–6) and “noght o word spak ... than was neede [spoke no more than was necessary]” (CT I 304), and Chaucer’s depiction of himself in that poem, who “lookest... evere upon the ground” (CT VII 696–7). Both are needled by the Host, who was based on a real Southwark taverner and bailiff, into taking part in the social structure of the story contest despite their reluctance to loudly claim a place for themselves (as, for example, the drunken Miller does). Similarly, Troilus of Troilus and Criseyde frequently retreats from society in the first half of the poem to contemplate his lovesickness, and toward the end of poem (having lost Criseyde again) attends some ill-advised festivities at the house of Sarpedoun in which he is simply psychologically incapable of participation (and ultimately asks to leave early). Just as the Canterbury Tales Clerk and Chaucer are bustled by the Host, Troilus is relentlessly nudged into social interaction by his friend Pandarus. That’s the common element of these depictions; whether these characters wish to be alone in order to read, or to think, or simply to temporarily not participate in social community, there is always an outside world “just outside the door” yammering for entry. Whether Chaucer was himself given to introversion or not, he responds to the constant social overload of life in late medieval London, and the desire to be alone that that could inculcate.

Chaucer’s not alone (fittingly) in expressing this sentiment. Thomas Hoccleve, the early fifteenth-century London bureaucrat, scribe and poet makes for a particularly interesting example (although vexingly I don’t have an edition to hand to quote). In his Complaint, he addresses his life before, during and after a period of mental illness (which seems to have been based on a genuine affliction). Both in the Complaint and in his Male Regle, he paints a picture of his vivacious social life before his illness – he chats with colleagues from the Privy Seal, he frequents taverns, he is on spirited terms with the Thames boatmen. Afterwards, this changes strikingly – not because of the illness itself, but because of its social consequences. He fears that those with whom he was once on good terms are anticipating his relapse, and so agonises over his every public action that might be held against him: his movements, his expressions, his tone. Ultimately, he chooses social disengagement over social embarrassment, and goes about his life alone. As in my selections from Chaucer, Hoccleve’s introversion has as much to do with the abrasiveness of the city itself as with his own psyche.

Obviously literary examples have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but it’s worth noting that both Chaucer and Hoccleve imagine introverted experiences in passages with autobiographical flavour (albeit stylised and fictionalised). Both contribute to our understanding of what urban living in the late Middle Ages could be like. As I stressed above, of course, different places, times and societal positions will have changed how introversion might manifest. But I certainly think it’s an experience that predates the modern period, and that it may occasionally have shared some root influences – particularly as the social fabric of spaces like cities became more recognisably “modern”.