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.
Medical History…
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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.
Medical History
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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!
Let’s read
Literary Devices Hunting…
3
groups
FORM & RHYME SCHEME
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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.
Repetition; Literal AND Positive Diction: Negative Diction:
metaphorical– physically Associated with Associated with
payment – not worth
& psychologically get
mountains
the price
down.
ALLITERATION:
JUXTAPOSITION:
Harsh consonant sounds –
High & down
emphasize negativity.
REPETITION:
Emphasizes Those early mercenaries, it made them ill –
leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air
gravity of
dislocation
to go down, down. What they got
Literal &
was money, dull crude coins clenched
metaphorical:
IMAGERY:
Coins (testing
in the teeth; strange food, the wrong taste,
Covers
metal) & foreign
stones
in
the
belly;
and
the
wrong
sounds,
spectrum of
food
the
wrong
smells,
the
wrong
light,
every
breath
–
sensation to
suggest
wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor,
totality.
they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them.
DESPARATE
DICTION:
Sense of sorrow
IRONY:
Soldiers, yet pining
away.
PARALINGUISTIC:
Suggests dialogue
occuring
OXYMORON:
PERSONIFICATION:
Bitter-sweetness of nostalgia. You ALLITERATION
Importance of
Like a series of sighs
pursue your desires, yet lose
naming. It is
or exhalations –
something in doing it .
nostalgia.
sense of sorrow –
Synesthesia – combining of 2
feeling their loss.
kinds of imagery (gustatory &
tactile).
CAESURA:
PERSONIFICATION:
Pause implies It was given a name. Hearing tell of it,
separation, there were those who stayed put, fearful Homeland’s objects
like sense of of a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt, too are sad at loss.
loss.
in the heavier air, to hear
METAPHOR
the music of home – the sad pipes – summoning,
Fading
in the dwindling light of the plains,
memories
a particular place – where maybe you met a girl,
HYPOTHETICAL:
or searched for a yellow ball in the long grass,
Unreliability of
Found it just as your mother called you in.
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
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?
But the word was out. Some would never
ROMANTIC IMAGE:
Loss of new life?
fall in love had they not heard of love.
Green of leaves.
So the priest stood at the stile with his head
METAPHOR:
Scent of youth is
in his hands, crying at the workings of memory
New
irretrievable.
through
the
colour
of
leaves,
and
the
schoolteacher
beginnings –
opened a book to the scent of her youth, too late.
he has
AUDITORY IMAGERY:
returned with It was spring when one returned, with his life
Now it’s the RIGHT
newness.
in a sack on his back, to find the same street
sound (on the hour)
with the same sign on the inn, the same bell
– positivity occurs
through accepting
chiming the hour on the clock, and everything changed.
REPETITION:
Evokes action of
repeatedly returning
in the hopes of
recovering a lost
past.
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.
Task…
 As
a class, we will produce a brilliantly
written and explored analysis of this
poem.
 Select
going!
a literary device, and let’s get