Nostalgia today is seen as essentially benign, a wistful longing
for the past. This wasn't always the case, however: from the late
seventeenth century through the end of the nineteenth, nostalgia
denoted a form of homesickness so extreme that it could sometimes
be deadly. What Nostalgia Was unearths that history. Thomas Dodman
begins his story in Basel, where a nineteen-year-old medical
student invented the new diagnosis, modeled on prevailing notions
of melancholy. From there, he traces its spread through the
European republic of letters and into Napoleon's armies, as French
soldiers far from home were diagnosed and treated for the disease.
Nostalgia then gradually transformed from a medical term to a more
expansive cultural concept, one that connected to Romantic notions
of the aesthetic pleasure of suffering. But the decisive shift
towards a benign emotion occurred in the colonies, where Frenchmen
worried about excessive creolization came to view a moderate
homesickness as salutary. An afterword reflects on how the history
of nostalgia can help us understand the transformations of the
modern world, rounding out a surprising, fascinating tour through
the history of a durable idea.
General
| Imprint: |
University of Chicago Press
|
| Country of origin: |
United States |
| Series: |
Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning |
| Release date: |
2018 |
| Authors: |
Thomas Dodman
|
| Dimensions: |
228 x 154 x 2mm (L x W x T) |
| Format: |
Paperback
|
| Pages: |
304 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-0-226-49294-0 |
| Categories: |
Books
|
| LSN: |
0-226-49294-X |
| Barcode: |
9780226492940 |
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