Nostalgia or das Heimweh: Homesickness and the Press-ganged Soldier in Sylvia’s Lovers (1863)

This article argues that Elizabeth Gaskell’s historical novel Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) uses nostalgia as a literary aesthetic and historical context to articulate a narrative of disorientating epochal change. Gaskell’s novel draws on nostalgia’s roots as a psychosomatic disease afflicting soldiers displaced by international conflicts to reassert the traumatic roots of a familiar feeling often understood as superficial and insignificant. Nostalgia began as a disease brought on by migration and only later came to be thought of as a type of sentimental memory; first home was far away and then it was long ago. Gaskell’s novel incorporates both, mingling longing for a place with longing for a past. This double distancing articulates an experience of transition within her historical novel. She draws on an eighteenth-century trope used by figures such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Wordsworth, repurposed for the demands of prose fiction. The homesick soldier who was the first sufferer with pathological nostalgia is cast as the central protagonist of historical transformation and an emblem of uneasy transitions. Sylvia’s Lovers has received scant critical notice to date and, perhaps for this reason, its explicit allusions to nostalgia, and the role they play in Gaskell’s historical imagination, have been left entirely unremarked.     

NOSTALGIA AND (PRE-)MODERNITY

This article argues that, in the fourteenth century, there was a wave of nostalgia that was provoked by extreme structural change: this was a moment of demographic catastrophe (with famine and plague), endemic warfare, economic fluctuation, intensified urbanization, and intellectual and spiritual novelties. Yet scholars from a range of disciplines have assumed that nostalgia and modernity are intimately connected. Given these framings of nostalgia as a modern phenomenon, this article seeks to explore the implications of premodern nostalgia. It begins by setting out the arguments for the intertwining of nostalgia and modernity. Some have argued that modernity brings a sense of rupture and that this produces nostalgia. Others, relatedly, have argued that modernity seems to speed up our experience of time and that this produces a nostalgia for a slower-paced and more predictable past. I juxtapose these arguments with evidence of fourteenth-century outpourings of nostalgia across a range of contexts in England, Italy, and France. I analyze examples of nostalgia in political contexts (both radical and reactionary), nostalgia for apparently lost economic orders, nostalgia for a lost set of chivalric values, and nostalgia for disrupted social orders. I then suggest that these fourteenth-century manifestations of nostalgia were actually produced by precisely the features of the period that are usually deemed to be exclusive to modernity: it was rapid, rupturing structural change that provoked nostalgic regret. Nostalgia, then, would seem to indicate that there are features of the fourteenth century that might be deemed modern. However, rather than simply trying to therefore push back the moment of the birth of modernity, I argue that nostalgia is indicative of the problems of periodization. The presence of nostalgia across epochs—these echoes across the webs of time—suggest that lines of periodization, birthing moments, need to be treated with extreme caution. And it is appropriate that such a reminder should come from a phenomenon such as nostalgia, which is, after all, about resonances and echoes across time—resonances that are amplified, distorted, whispered even, but that all challenge and complicate any straightforward sense of either linear or cyclical time.     

国内外乡愁相关研究进展及启示

对国内外已有的乡愁相关研究进行了梳理,并结合自身学科背景,从旅游地乡愁建设角度,提出几点未来研究方向。研究发现,对乡愁内涵的认识,经历了从单纯可治愈的生理病症、到复杂的心理学现象、再到对现代话反思三个阶段。国外从心理学、神经科学、经济学、社会学、消费者行为学、文学、民俗学、地理学等角度,已形成对乡愁情感本身、乡愁的触发要素、影响乡愁体验的因素、乡愁在实践中的应用的系统研究。我国乡愁研究起步较晚,早期主要集中在文学和社会学领域,2013年后,乡愁逐渐得到地理学、建筑学、民俗学等多学科的关注,目前在乡愁的概念界定、乡愁的理论化、乡愁的触发要素识别、乡愁价值开发等方面形成了初步成果。     

怀旧情感对历史文化街区游客环境责任行为的影响研究——感知价值和地方依恋的中介作用

伴随着历史文化街区旅游可持续发展的现实需要,本研究从怀旧情感出发,以感知价值和地方依恋为中介变量,构建历史文化街区游客的环境责任行为影响机制,以广州市荔湾区历史文化街区为例,运用结构方程模型的方法对346份有效问卷进行分析,结果表明：①游客怀旧情感并未对其环境责任行为产生显著的直接影响;②游客怀旧情感对其环境责任行为的影响机制主要是通过“怀旧情感→地方依恋→环境责任行为”和“怀旧情感→感知价值→地方依恋→环境责任行为”两条间接路径实现;③感知价值在怀旧情感与环境责任行为之间不存在单独中介效应。研究对历史文化型旅游地游客环境责任行为的形成机制进行有益探讨,并为改善历史文化街区的卫生环境提供了有意义的管理建议。     

全球化背景下的城市怀旧现象及地理学研究视角

现代化、全球化和城市化催生了当代的怀旧现象,城市怀旧已成为一种极其普遍的社会文化景观,并成为国内外学界关注的重要话题。通过对国内外文献的分析,总结了国内外城市怀旧现象的研究状况,以及文化地理学视角的研究进展。研究表明,城市怀旧研究已经渗透至诸多学科领域,国外文化地理学者从多个角度开展了城市怀旧的研究,但该研究在国内还十分鲜见。文章指出可以结合文化地理学及相关理论,从人地关系角度,分析城市怀旧文化的形成发展及其与城市文化生态环境的互动作用,探讨城市怀旧空间的生成、类型、特征、时空演变及其动力机制,解读城市怀旧文化景观对于城市怀旧空间的诠释以及地方认同的影响,以揭示在城市怀旧空间形成和演变过程中,城市记忆、地理想象、地方认同和建构的互动作用机理。认为城市怀旧的地理学研究将拓展我国城市文化地理学的研究视野,并对城市更新、历史街区的保护和复兴提供重要的理论支撑和决策依据。     

1. THE MEANINGS OF NOSTALGIA: GENEALOGY AND CRITIQUE

Nostalgia has become a new master narrative both in public discourse and academic research, serving as an explanation for trends in fields as different as popular culture, fashion, technology, and politics. This essay criticizes the wide‐ranging use of the term. It argues that nostalgia often does not adequately describe the diverse uses of the past to which it is applied. It does this by historicizing the nostalgia discourse with particular emphasis on the 1970s, when dictionaries first noted a semantic shift from homesickness to a sentimental yearning for the past, and intellectuals discussed a widespread, pathological “nostalgia wave.” After the introduction, the second section looks at the changing meanings of nostalgia, the third examines how the “nostalgia wave” was seen to manifest itself and who was thought to be afflicted by it, and the fourth discusses contemporary explanations. Building on this, the final section critically examines the nostalgia discourse before evaluating its continuing influence.     

关于“乡愁”的空间道德和地方道德评价

乡愁涉及空间和地方,且与人之情感密切关联,故关于乡愁的研究与地理学密切相关。文化的重要功能之一就是指引人们的空间实践。文化地理学的任务之一则是从文化上理解和评判空间和地方的现象。本文分析立场是人文主义地理学,以及由之派生的道德地理学。本文从空间和地方两个维度分析乡愁的背后的道德,并列举了较为成功的乡愁实践案例。归纳出的结论有三:第一,乡愁的道德具有大小、距离、移动性的空间维度。第二,乡愁的道德具有身体层面、经验层面和社会建构层面的地方性质。第三,无论是空间道德评价还是地方道德评价,都在回答对自己、对他者、对自然的态度,在评判留住乡愁的空间规划实践是否"合理"。本文最后提出了文化地理学关于乡愁空间道德和地方道德的分析框架,以供读者讨论。     

Nostalgia and Titanic commemorations in Cobh,Ireland

The year 2012 marked the centenary of the sinking of the liner Titanic. This event has been commemorated in a variety of ways, including the development of “authentic” and “created” tourist projects related to Titanic. This research presents one location's tourist response to the centenary. The heritage town of Cobh in Ireland was the last port of call for the ill-fated liner. Its commemorative activities focused on a week-long festival of cultural events from 9 to 15 April. It will be contended that its use of nostalgia and “vintage” can be interpreted more as a function of the interpretative agenda of Irish tourism policy and its heritage construction of Cobh than as a genuine symbolic expression of a town remembering its past.     

2. NOSTALGIA AND THE TURBULENCE OF TIMES

The concept of nostalgia has an invaluable advantage: In contrast to other cultural concepts, it has an exact date of birth. It was in 1688 when the medic Johannes Hofer published a thesis in which he described an illness he termed with the neologism “nostalgia.” But instead of following the academic and larger cultural discourses that evolved from this starting point until the present, the question that deserves some attention is which temporal setting goes along with the concept of nostalgia. Most of the experts on nostalgia as a sickness during the last three and a half centuries did not diagnose themselves but others, quite often patients from rural areas who had to leave home to work abroad, where they became nostalgic. With this diagnosis these experts also established a certain time‐model, because they separated a “modern” time‐model of irreversibility from a “nostalgic” time‐model of reversibility. If we take a closer look at the nostalgia diagnosis and its consequences, we might also gain some ideas for our thinking about the theory of history.     

Nostalgia for ‘innocent homely pleasures’: The 1964 New Zealand Controversy over Washday at the Pa

In 1964, the New Zealand Department of Education withdrew and destroyed 38,000 copies of Washday at the Pa, a booklet depicting Maori family life, at the request of the Maori Women’s Welfare League. This essay explores the raced and gendered context of the ensuing uproar in the press, which debated aspects of New Zealand identity. It situates the Washday controversy in the context of post-war housing and differential standards of living experienced by Maori and pakeha. It argues that the League upheld claims to both modernity and tradition, while many pakeha used the occasion to express nostalgia for mother–centred domesticity.     

气味景观感知对乡村地方依恋的影响机制研究——兼论怀旧的中介作用

气味的作用是潜移默化的，本文在乡村旅游情境下，运用结构方程研究了气味景观感知对于地方依恋的影响作用。研究发现：①乡村气味景观感知显著地正向影响旅游者地方依恋；②乡村气味景观感知对于怀旧有显著的正向影响；③历史怀旧对地方依赖有显著正向影响，个人怀旧对于地方依赖和地方认同均有显著正向影响；④怀旧在气味景观感知和地方依恋之间的中介效应得到验证。研究证实了气味景观的重要作用，明晰了怀旧在乡村旅游体验中的核心地位，对丰富旅游体验和打造乡村旅游景观具有一定的启示意义。     

The role of the past in late medieval hidalgo historical writing and memory

ABSTRACT

This essay is structured around two themes: the writing of history and memory. On the one hand, it analyses the use of the past in Lope García de Salazar's Libro de las buenas andanças e fortunas (1471–5). His approach to history is imbued with nostalgia for a legendary past, and more specifically for a political arrangement between the Lord of Biscay and the lesser nobility (hidalgos) which ensured respect for their privileges. This is set in contrast to a second group of material, legal documentation relating to the town of Escalante in Cantabria. Historically under seigniorial control, the inhabitants created a collective memory that framed a past prior to the fourteenth century which was free of lords and feudal obligations.     

The Time and Place of Nostalgia: Re-situating a French Disease

The history of nostalgia as a clinical category has many highly specific national stories. This paper traces an aspect of this history, examining aspects of nostalgia's changing meanings in nineteenth-century France. Nostalgia was a disease triggered by displacement, which became medically and politically important after the French Revolution, when military surgeons encountered epidemics of nostalgia in the armed forces. Understood as a form of pathological homesickness, the category straddled environmental medicine and emerging ideas about insanity. The diagnosis became particularly important to Idéologue writers as a case study in regulating and redirecting the emotions, demonstrating the efficacy of their new "moral" treatments and an ability to generate patriotic attachment to the new nation state. Over the course of the century, nostalgia disintegrated as a medical condition reflecting a decline in environmental explanations for disease within medicine, and increasingly plastic meanings attached to nostalgic desire.     

The (really) good war? Cold War nostalgia and American foreign policy

This article argues that the Cold War nostalgia of the present in the United States is ultimately based upon a poor – instrumentalist – reading of history. If anything, Cold War nostalgia shows the malleability of our present-day understanding of the past.     

The Darcy effect: Regional tourism and costume drama

Abstract

In the last two decades there has been largely critical discussion of the role which costume films play in the construction of the idea of national hertiage. Much of this writing has assumed that such films generally holster partial and conservative interests and represent a chronic nostalgia for a make‐believe past. Adaptations from historic classic novels are claimed to foist predominantly middle‐class tastes and standards upon the broader viewing public. The extraordinary success of the BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice gives one the opportunity to examine in some detail the inter‐connectedness of a number of cultural industries including heritage, museums, tourism, publishing and television, in audience perception and reception.     

3. THE NOSTALGIAS FOR EMPIRE

The aim of this article is to explore the theoretical and practical differences between colonial and imperial nostalgia. It opens with a substantial theoretical discussion of the relevant scholarship followed by an analysis of the nostalgias of empire. Nostalgia, in relation to empire, is usually analyzed as a longing for a period of former imperial and colonial glory, thus blurring the various hegemonic practices associated with empire. This elision arises out of the fact colonialism was integral to European imperialism. Yet there is a significant distinction between imperial and colonial nostalgia. With its main focus on postcolonial society in France and Britain, the article will theorize the differences between them, arguing that one is connected to the loss of global power and the other to the loss of a socioeconomic lifestyle. It will explore the way in which these two types of nostalgia are constructed and historicized, examining their differences from historical memory through the responses of both former colonizing and colonized individuals or groups. It will demonstrate that collective nostalgia is not merely a “feel‐good” sentiment about an idealized political or socioeconomic past, but can be readily connected to coming to terms with past trauma(s) thus being a mechanism to elide violence experienced and violence perpetrated by highlighting one to the detriment of the other.     

"Fitter families for future firesides": Florence Sherbon and popular eugenics

In the 1920s, eugenicists adapted public health contests to create "Fitter Family for Future Firesides" contests. Designed by Mary T. Watts and Dr. Florence Sherbon, these contests were deliberately staged at agricultural fairs. These contests encouraged families to re-imagine their histories as pedigrees subject to scientific analysis and control, while appealing to a deeply rooted sense of nostalgia for the rural family as the nation became increasingly urban, as rural children left farms, and as the culture of the Roaring Twenties challenged "traditional values". As such, the fitter family contests fused nostalgia for the farm family with a modernist promise of scientific control.     

Triad Dramas as Commentaries on Revolutionary Disharmony,Totalitarian Nostalgia,and a Yearning for Past Chivalry

In 2007, amateur on-line writer Kong Ergou’s triad novel series, Past Events of the Northeast: Twenty Years of the Triads, became a hit as a piece of network original literature. Five years later, the first volume of the book series was adapted into a network television drama of the same title. Focusing on the television drama, this paper examines three interrelated “dimensions” of the text. The first “dimension” relates to the correspondence between the inception and development of underworld gangs, and the vicissitudes experienced by the Chinese people during the harsh and unprecedented economic and cultural conditions that were introduced during the post-Mao era. A second “dimension” of this dramatic text finds that the nostalgia for and admiration of totalitarian times, together with a postmodern parody and deconstruction of Maoist society and its ideology, are juxtaposed in contemporary popular cultural products such as Past Events, thus demonstrating the complex and obscure emotions of ordinary Chinese people in relation to socialist revolutionary times. The final “dimension” compares the chivalrous spirit espoused by the gangsters with the ever-deteriorating morality and ethical values prevalent in present-day China.     

Re-imagining the kitchen as a site of memory

Extending the focus of previous geographical research on public spaces of remembering, this paper demonstrates the ways in which memory work also takes place in private domestic spaces. The paper draws on a combination of life history and ethnographic research undertaken in Northern England, examining kitchens as a specific lieu de mémoire, showing how they serve as places where valued items are displayed and material artefacts are curated as part of the construction and reproduction of personal memories and familial identities. Using ethnographic and visual evidence from two case study households, the paper demonstrates the role of material artefacts in curating the past and materialising memory. Additionally, life history interviews with older women reveal narratives of everyday cooking practices which seemingly contradict popular discourses of the past, questioning conventional ideas about the distorted nature of nostalgia. In combination, our data represent complex narratives in which the past can be seen as infusing the present, and where present-day concerns are revealed as actively shaping public discourses which favour a return to an idealised past, which may have little bearing on people’s actual lived experience.     

Landscape and Gentrification: The Picturesque and Pastoral in 1980s New York Cinema

In this article I discuss 1980s New York cinema through the conceptual lens of landscape, drawing in particular on the interconnected but separate traditions of the pastoral and the picturesque. While the former mode of representing landscape is idealizing (the shepherd/nymph‐motif), the latter with its origins in the period of the enclosures of the English countryside tends to aestheticize poverty and dispossession. This distinction can productively be deployed in relation to tensions between glamorization and exploitation in 1980s New York cinema, which often dealt with the themes of rent, eviction, and unemployment in postindustrial settings. Focusing in particular on Downtown 81 (Edo Bertoglio, 1981/2000) and Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985), I argue that the current nostalgia for a pre‐gentrified and less regulated New York in popular culture is dependent on these idealizing and aestheticizing tendencies insofar that they conceal or prettify some of the darker aspects of the period.