nostalgia what does it mean? what do you feel nostalgic about? me?

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

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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” = nostosAlgos = sorrows / griefs / suffering

Nostalgia: Psychological suffering caused by a desire to return.

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.

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!

Let’s read

Literary Devices Hunting… 3 groups

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.

Those early mercenaries, it made them ill – leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine airto go down, down. What they got was money, dull crude coins clenchedin the teeth; strange food, the wrong taste,stones in the belly; and the wrong sounds,the wrong smells, the wrong light, every breath –wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor, they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them.

Negative Diction: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.

Literal & metaphorical:Coins (testing metal) & foreign food

REPETITION:Emphasizes gravity of dislocation IMAGERY:Covers spectrum of sensation to suggest totality.

PARALINGUISTIC:Suggests dialogue occuring

JUXTAPOSITION:High & down

DESPARATE DICTION:Sense of sorrow

IRONY:Soldiers, yet pining away.

It was given a name. Hearing tell of it,there were those who stayed put, fearfulof a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt,in the heavier air, to hearthe music of home – the sad pipes – summoning,in the dwindling light of the plains,a particular place – where maybe you met a girl,or searched for a yellow ball in the long grass,Found it just as your mother called you in.

PERSONIFICATION:Importance of naming. It is nostalgia.

OXYMORON:Bitter-sweetness of nostalgia. You pursue your desires, yet lose something in doing it .Synesthesia – combining of 2 kinds of imagery (gustatory & tactile).

ALLITERATIONLike a series of sighs or exhalations – sense of sorrow – feeling their loss.

PERSONIFICATION:Homeland’s objects too are sad at loss.

CAESURA:Pause implies separation, like sense of loss.

ALLITERATION:Repetitive technique – like thinking back to the past? Going back to one place

HYPOTHETICAL:Unreliability of memory

SWITCH TO 2nd PERSON:Reader now involved.

PRECISE ADJECTIVES:Capacity of memory to evoke powerful recollections

METAPHORFading memories

But the word was out. Some would neverfall in love had they not heard of love.So the priest stood at the stile with his headin his hands, crying at the workings of memorythrough the colour of leaves, and the schoolteacheropened a book to the scent of her youth, too late.It was spring when one returned, with his lifein a sack on his back, to find the same streetwith the same sign on the inn, the same bellchiming the hour on the clock, and everything changed.

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.

REPETITION:Evokes action of repeatedly returning in the hopes of recovering a lost past.

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.

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.

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!