What nostalgia was : war, empire, and the time of a deadly emotion / Thomas Dodman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dodman, Thomas, author.

Series:

Chicago studies in practices of meaning.

Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nostalgia--History.

Nostalgia.

Nostalgia--France--History--19th century.

Nostalgia--France--History--18th century.

France--History--1789-1900.

France.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations, map.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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, Dodman 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 encompassed Romantic notions of the aesthetic pleasure of suffering. But the decisive shift toward its contemporary meaning occurred in the colonies, where Frenchmen worried about racial and cultural mixing came to view 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Nostalgia as a Historical Problem

Chapter 1. Nostalgia in 1688

Chapter 2. The Reasons of a Passion

Chapter 3. The Lost Pays of the Patrie

Chapter 4. Mothers and Sons in the Time of Napoleonic War

Chapter 5. Golden Age

Chapter 6. Nostalgia in the Tropics

Chapter 7. Ubi bene, ibi patria: Nostalgia Fin de Siècle

Afterword: Nostalgia in History

Abbreviations

Notes

Archival Sources

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226493138 (electronic bk.)

9780226493138

022649313X

OCLC:

1015676192