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Nostalgia

Nostalgia. What does it mean? What do you feel nostalgic about? Me? . Mercenary. NOSTALGIA. Homer’s Odyssey: 20 years of trying to return to Ithaca. Greek “return” = nostos Algos = sorrows / griefs / suffering Nostalgia: Psychological suffering caused by a desire to return.

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Nostalgia

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  1. Nostalgia • What does it mean? • What do you feel nostalgic about? • Me?

  2. Mercenary

  3. NOSTALGIA • Homer’s Odyssey: 20 years of trying to return to Ithaca. Greek “return” = nostos Algos= sorrows / griefs / suffering Nostalgia: Psychological suffering caused by a desire to return.

  4. Medical History… • 1688 Hofer studied symptoms of Swiss mercenaries fighting in distant lands. • Believed nostalgia was a medical disease. • Symptoms: weeping, anorexia, suicide attempts, indigestion, fainting. • Mercenaries banned from singing ‘Kuhreihen’ • Hofer believes they suffered nostalgia (homesickness)…”a cerebral disease of essentially demonic cause.” • Smell & touch are strong evokers.

  5. Medical History • 1732. JJ Scheuchzer – nostalgia was due to “a sharp differential in atmospheric pressure causing excessive body pressurization, which in turn drove blood from the heart to the brain, thereby producing the observed affliction of sentiment.” • It was believed that only the Swiss suffered nostalgia. • Due to damage to brain cells & ear drums caused by clanging cowbells in Switzerland!

  6. Let’s read

  7. Literary Devices Hunting… • 3 groups

  8. FORM & RHYME SCHEME • FORM: • Irregular stanzas (9, 9, 10) • RHYME: • No rhyme scheme: • Irregularity reflects problem with psychology, and with nostalgia itself – harkening back to something no-longer there. Pathos.

  9. NegativeDiction: Associated with payment – not worth the price Repetition; Literal AND metaphorical– physically & psychologically get down. Positive Diction: Associated with mountains ALLITERATION: Harsh consonant sounds – emphasize negativity. JUXTAPOSITION: High & down REPETITION: Emphasizes gravity of dislocation Those early mercenaries, it made them ill – leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air to go down, down. What they got was money, dull crude coins clenched in the teeth; strange food, the wrongtaste, stones in the belly; and the wrongsounds, the wrongsmells, the wronglight, every breath – wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor, they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them. Literal & metaphorical: Coins (testing metal) & foreign food IMAGERY: Covers spectrum of sensation to suggest totality. PARALINGUISTIC: Suggests dialogue occuring IRONY: Soldiers, yet pining away. DESPARATE DICTION: Sense of sorrow

  10. OXYMORON: Bitter-sweetness of nostalgia. You pursue your desires, yet lose something in doing it . Synesthesia – combining of 2 kinds of imagery (gustatory & tactile). PERSONIFICATION: Importance of naming. It is nostalgia. ALLITERATION Like a series of sighs or exhalations – sense of sorrow – feeling their loss. CAESURA: Pause implies separation, like sense of loss. PERSONIFICATION: Homeland’s objects too are sad at loss. It was given a name. Hearing tell of it, there were those who stayed put, fearful of a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt, in the heavier air, to hear the music of home–the sadpipes – summoning, in the dwindling light of the plains, a particular place – where maybeyou met a girl, or searched for a yellow ball in the longgrass, Found it just as yourmother called youin. METAPHOR Fading memories HYPOTHETICAL: Unreliability of memory ALLITERATION: Repetitive technique – like thinking back to the past? Going back to one place SWITCH TO 2nd PERSON: Reader now involved. PRECISE ADJECTIVES: Capacity of memory to evoke powerful recollections

  11. NAMING: The word is NOSTALGIA. In the beginning was the word – naming creates realities CONCEPT: Sapir whorf Hypothesis AUTHORITY FIGURES: Yet they too yearn for the impossible – societal? ROMANTIC IMAGE: Loss of new life? Green of leaves. Scent of youth is irretrievable. But the word was out. Some would never fall in love had they not heard of love. So the priest stood at the stile with his head in his hands, crying at the workings of memory through the colour of leaves, and the schoolteacher opened a book to the scent of her youth, too late. It was spring when one returned, with his life in a sack on his back, to find the samestreet with the samesign on the inn, the samebell chiming the hour on the clock, and everything changed. METAPHOR: New beginnings – he has returned with newness. AUDITORY IMAGERY: Now it’s the RIGHT sound (on the hour) – positivity occurs through accepting change & newness. TENSION:: Between returning and renewing. Place is the same, but time has passed. It’s not the same, because the person has changed – the past is irretrievably gone.. This is from a collection called MEAN TIME. REPETITION: Evokes action of repeatedly returning in the hopes of recovering a lost past.

  12. Task… • As a class, we will produce a brilliantly written and explored analysis of this poem. • Select a literary device, and let’s get going!

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