Some very useful extra notes from Ms Main

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…     



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.

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