The history and background of nostalgia english literature essay

3LiteratureResearch MethodProf. Jaymee SiaoPreliminary Review of Related LiteratureNostalgiaIn Hope Yu’s study, ” Memory, Nostalgia, and the Filipino Diaspora in the Works of two Filipina Writers”, modern diaspora is defined as a movement recognized as the dispersal and ” movement” of people across different parts of the world during the peak and decline of colonization. To demonstrate themselves as participants of the diaspora, many Filipino writers would document what transpired during this experience. Two of the writers included in this documentation are Cecila Manguerra Brainard and Ninotchka Rosca. The book expounds details utilizing the works of these two Filipino writers on ” Migrant Writing” (writing based on alienation as ” geographical removal from origins”) and the concept of ” home”. The book concentrates more on nostalgia and its relations with these two aspects. Anna Shields’ book, ” Remembering When: The Uses of Nostalgia in the Poetry of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen” also centres upon the concept of nostalgia through the poems of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen which simultaneously reminisce and expose both these poets’ personal experiences in Mid-Tang China, their own ambitions, competitions, and story of disgraces amongst the literary circle. These exchanges of nostalgic recollections serve as a bonding medium for the two friends, also as means to advertise their own talent to the readers and to explore the meaning of their own experiences. Place was a critical aspect in their nostalgia: both the places were these writings were composed and the ” remembered place”. The term ” nostalgia” is applied to indicate of elements or factors that usually provoke both pleasure and sorrow. The author introduces the notion of ” autobiographical memory” which indicates of the person’s organized memory he/she has personally experienced. This study focuses primarily on the study of nostalgia in connection with what transpired during the friendship of the two poets. Joan Ramon Resina’s ” Money, Desire and History in Eduardo Mendoza’s City of Marvels”, endeavours to restore the historical novel genre while subjecting it to the conventions of romance. The depiction of the adventures of capital and the production of marvels alludes to Spain’s modernization and to money’s function as a symbol of desire. The accomplishment of marvels involves the conquest of time and the substitution of illusion timelessness for historical possibilities. Timelessness mediated by money negates history through the production of artificial historical images, which restricts an idealized past as the object of desire. The figurative replication of historical events is the response to nostalgia for a missed historical opportunity by a subject seeking myth’s illusory power. Janelle Wilson in her ” Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning”, attempts to interconnect the link between the notion of nostalgia and identity. It indicates that nostalgia can help to ” facilitate” the continuity of one’s own identity. Individually and collectively, the past is remembered and, in this act of recall, it is often ” re-created”. The author’s position is that whether nostalgia’s claims about previous times are true or accurate is not as important as why and how those nostalgic claims emerge. It also addresses the problem involving maintaining the ” coherent self” in the act of remembering, recollecting, reminiscing etc. This books attempts to debunk popular notions of nostalgia and its impact on society. Chona Trinidad’s ” Nostalgia: The Way We Were” is a compilation of column presenting the author’s childhood memories which, to some extent, connects upon her own identity. This book displays her upbringing, exposing her high social status, rigid moral standards and Spanish orientation. She is able to translate her own thoughts and recollections on the daily life of a Filipino and illustrate the manner with which her fellow Filipinos speak, worship, shop, eat, commute etc. from these perspectives. These insights which changes from ” the then” to ” the now” illuminate the Filipino culture for a specific vantage point. This book reflects the nostalgic experiences of a Filipina child and its depiction on Filipino culture. MelancholiaThomas Dutoit’s ” Rape, Crypt and Fantasm : Kleist’s the Marquise of O…” discusses on the novella, ” The Marquis of O…”, which follows the life of a virtuous woman who finds herself mysteriously pregnant. She has no idea whatsoever how it happened and who the perpetrator was and must prove her innocence to her family. Immediately, it is revealed that she was raped by a gang of Russian soldiers. Dutoit analyses this trauma with the notion of the ” crypt”, developed by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. He applies psychoanalysis on the ” traumatic space of mourning” and melancholia. Nostalgia and melancholia are usually interrelated and interchangeable with one another and was regarded as ” sickness” in the Early Modern Period. This study inserts the notion of melancholia and traumatic experiences of the protagonist. Jula Kristeva in her ” Black Sun : Depression and Melancholia”, also focuses on the subject of melancholia, investigating this concept in the context of art, literature, philosophy, the history of religion and culture, as well as psychoanalysis. The depressive is depicted as the one who perceives the ” sense of self” as an important (unattainable) goal. She also discusses on the love of a lost identity of ” attachment” lies on the very core of the ” dark heart”. She also illustrates the feminine depression, beauty, the writing of suffering and forgiveness and the notion of grief. This book explores melancholia as a ” malady” and its consequences on one’s identity. Harvie Ferguson’s ” Melancholy and the Critique of Modernity: Soren Kierkegaard’s Religious Psychology” studies upon the connection between the emergence of modern society and the experience of melancholy. The idea of sadness without reason or stimulus contributes upon the concept of human ” self-understanding” throughout the development of Western society. But with the emergence of modernity melancholy has become its most pervasive and significant experience. The relationship between melancholy and modernity is examined through a ” comprehensive re-examination” of the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. The book encompasses the context of a social and ” historical theory” of melancholy. MemoryTito Genova Valiente and Hiroko Nagai’s ” War memories, Monuments and Media: Representations of Conflicts and Creation of Histories of World War II” illustrates the World War II in Japan, especially the monuments, memories and media Hokkaido. It also includes the post-war difficulty of ” rearticulating belongingness”, the depiction of war criminals and kamikaze pilots as Japanese role models, and representations of the war through contemporary Japanese films and its corresponding formation of the ” collective memory” under the so-called ” emperor system”. Though it attempts to exhibit experiences during the war, nostalgia for the years during this period plays an important role for this study. This book exemplifies roles of memories and nostalgia during and after the war. Robert Lougy’s ” Dickens and the Wolfman : Childhood Memory and Fantasy in David Copperfield” is based on Freud’s case history of the Wolf Man (From the History of an Infantile Neurosis; 1918). It presents one of the most famous dreams in the history of psychoanalysis, in order to consider a moment in David Copperfield (1850) that constitutes the earliest childhood memory in Dickens’s fiction. These two moments in Freud and Dickens occupy ” problematic sites” that seem to slide between fantasy on the one hand and dreams on the other. It expounds and examines on how texts remember or fantasize childhood and its power to structure adult experience. Sarah Meadows discusses in her book ” The Child as Thinker: The Development and Acquisition in Childhood” the nature and subject on cognition and illuminates children’s thinking in detail. She discusses the ways children remember and organize information in general, the acquisition of basic skills during the early years of childhood and the development of reasoning as the children grow to maturity. She reviews the main area relevant to individual differences, normal cognitive development and examines the three major models of development. This book includes the concept of memory and ” remembering” as a basic human cognitive activity which corresponds to the improvement of the child’s brain activity alongside the child’s capacity to ” remember” or ” recollect”. Wang Qi’s ” Culture effects on Adult’s Earliest Childhood Recollection and Self-Description : Implications for the Relation between Memory and the Self”, American and Chinese college students were tested on their earliest childhood memory on a memory questionnaire. The average age at earliest memory of Americans was almost six months earlier than that of Chinese. Americans reported lengthy and emotionally elaborate memories; they also include description of themselves. Chinese provided ” brief accounts” of childhood memories centring on general routines, and ” emotionally neutral events”; they also included a great number of social roles in their self-descriptions. Across the entire sample, individuals who described themselves in more self-focused and positive terms provided more specific and self-focused memories. Findings are discussed in light of the interactive relation between ” autobiographical memory and cultural self-construal”.