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Book Chapter

Chronotopes of Affectivity in Literature. On Melancholy, Estrangement, and Reflective Nostalgia

  • Laura Salmon

Basing our analysis on the concepts of ‘emotion’, ‘feeling’, and ‘mood’ as defined by data from the cognitive sciences, we argue that human emotions are both universal and intrinsically linked to literary and artistic chronotopes. In her study of 'reflective' and 'restorative' nostalgia, Svetlana Boym (2001) shows that 'nostalgia' itself represents pure ambivalence that takes on a particular shape in response to the mood, thoughts, and psychological state of the author. Its ultimate expression might assume the form of either monological ideology or of paradoxical existential emotion. It is this second type of nostalgia that we can link most closely link to understandings of both 'melancholy' and 'identity' or 'self-consciousness'. Brooding and melancholic toska is shared by persons who suffer from what we might call 'existential ambivalence'; these persons are 'mercurials' in the terminology of Yuri Slezkine (2004). Within the field of Russian literature, this 'mercurial' sense of melancholy is particularly well developed.

  • Keywords:
  • Literary emotions,
  • nostalgia,
  • Literature & cognitive science,
  • chronotopes,
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Laura Salmon

University of Genoa, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-2917-7630

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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Chronotopes of Affectivity in Literature. On Melancholy, Estrangement, and Reflective Nostalgia

Authors

Laura Salmon

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4.02

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2015

Copyright Information

© 2015 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Melancholic Identities, Toska and Reflective Nostalgia

Book Subtitle

Case Studies from Russian and Russian-Jewish Culture

Editors

Sara Dickinson, Laura Salmon

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

194

Publication Year

2015

Copyright Information

© 2015 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4

ISBN Print

978-88-6655-821-7

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-6655-822-4

eISBN (xml)

978-88-9273-384-8

Series Title

Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici

Series ISSN

2612-7687

Series E-ISSN

2612-7679

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