Chronotopes of Affectivity in Literature. On Melancholy, Estrangement, and Reflective Nostalgia Laura Salmon University of Genoa, Italy This is a section of Melancholic Identities, Toska and Reflective Nostalgia(DOI: 10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4) by Laura Salmon, Sara Dickinson Firenze University Press Firenze 2015 https://doi.org/10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4.02

Available for academic research purposes

Open Access

Copyright Author(s)

Content licence CC BY 4.0

Metadata licence CC0 1.0

This is original content, published for academic research purposes

 Digital edition XML powered by Booksflow

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.

 Literary emotions nostalgia Literature & cognitive science chronotopes

It is available online at https://doi.org/10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4.02

References Argenton A., Messina I. (2000) - L ’enigma del mondo poetico. L ’indagine sperimentale in psicologia della letteratura, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino. Bak D.P. (1995) - Èstetika M. Baxtina v kontekste genezisa idei istoričeskoj poètiki, in K.G. Isupov (ed.), Baxtinologija. Issledovanija, perevody, publikacii, II, Aletejja, SPb., 179-188. Bakhtin [Baxtin] M.M. (1981) - Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics (1937-1938), in Id., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, University of Texas Press, Austin, 84-258. Boyd B. (2009) - On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge-London. Boym S. (2001) - The Future of Nostalgia, Basic Books, New York. Burton R. (1989) - The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), ed. by T.C. Faulkner, N.K. Kiessling, R.L. Blair, Clarendon, Oxford. Changeux J.-P. (2004) - L ’Homme de vérité (2002), Odile, Paris. Dal’ V. (1979) - Tolkovyj slovar’ živogo velikorusskogo jazyka (1880-1882), I-IV, Russkij jazyk, M. Damasio A. (2003) - Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harcourt, Orlando. Damasio A. (2006) - Descartes’ Error (1994), Vintage, London. Davidson R.J. (1994) - On Emotion, Mood, and Related Affective Constructs, in P. Ekman, R.J. Davidson, The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 51-55. Dickinson S. (2015) - Otečestvo, Otčizna, Rodina: Russian ‘Translations ’ of Patrie in the Napoleonic Period, in D.C. Offord, L. Ryazanova-Clarke, V. Rjéoutski, G. Argent (eds.), French and Russian in Imperial Russia, II, Language Attitudes and Identity, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 179-196. Diddi C. (2009) - Sulla genesi e il significato del cronotopo in Bachtin, “Ricerche slavistiche”, LIII (VII N.S.), 143-156. Dissanayake E. (1995) - Homo Aestheticus (1992), University of Washington Press, Seattle. Dovlatov S. (1983) - Marš odinokix, New England Publishing Co., Holyoke (MA). Ejxenbaum B.M. (1924) - Kak sdelana ‘Šinel” Gogolja, in Id., Skvoz literatury. Sbornik stat’ej (1919), Academia, L., 306-326. Ekman P., Davidson R.J. (eds.) (1994) - The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford. Etkind A. (2005) - Filologija, psixologija i politika Efima Etkinda, in E. Etkind, Psixopoetika, Iskusstvo-SPB, SPb, 5-14. Etkind E. (2005) - Psixopoetika, Iskusstvo-SPB, SPb. Evgen’eva A.P. (1985) - Slovar’ russkogo jazyka v četyrex tomax, I-IV, Russkij jazyk, M. Frank L.K. (1954) - Feelings and Emotions, Doubleday & Co., New York. Frijda N.H. (1994) - Varieties of Affect: Emotions and Episodes, Moods, and Sentiments, in P. Ekman, R.J. Davidson (eds.), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 59-67. Gebert L. (2012) - Le caractère national dans la langue et la typologie linguistique, “Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage”, 33, 101-112. Harkins J., Wierzbicka A. (2001) - Emotions in Crosslinguistic Perspective, Mouton de Gruytier, Berlin. Hughes J. (2011) - ‘Affective Worlds’. Writing, Feeling and Nineteenth-Century Literature, Sussex Academic Press, Portland (GB). Jakobson R. (1987) - On Linguistic Aspects of Translation (1959), in Id., Language in Literature, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge-London, 428-435. Juxannison [Johannisson] K. (2011) - Istorija melanxolii (2009), “Novoe Literatumoe Obozrenie”, M. Kagan J. (1994) - On Emotion, Mood, and Related Affective Constructs, in P. Ekman, R.J. Davidson (eds.), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 74-78. Lazarus R. (1994) - Individual Differences in Emotion, in P. Ekman, R.J. Davidson (eds.), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 332-336. LeDoux J. (1996) - The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, Phoenix, London. LeDoux J. (2002) - Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are, Viking, New York. McEwan I. (2005) - Literature, Science, and Human Nature, in E.O. Wilson, F. Crews (eds.), The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 5-19. Oxford Dictionary (2015) - Oxford Dictionary of British and World English, cf. <http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/browse/english/> (cons. 01.10.15). Pickering M. (2001) - Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation, Paigrave, New York. Pinker S. (1997) - How the Mind Works, W.W. Norton, New York. Pirandello L. (1995) - L ’umorismo (1908), Garzanti, Milano. Ponzio A. (2002) - Presentazione, in I. Kanaev (M. Baxtin), Il vitalismo contemporaneo, “Athanor”, XIII.5, 21-26. Prete A. (2008) - Trattato della Lontananza, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino. Rosenwein B.H. (2010) - Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions, “Passions in Context: International Journal for the History and Theory of Emotions”, 1, 1-32, cf. <http://www.passionsincontext.de/uploads/media/01_Rosenwein.pdf> (cons. 08.08.14). Salmon L. (2006) - A Theoretical Proposal on Human Translation Processes, “Cognitive Systems”, VI.4, 311-334. Sherer K. (1994) - Universals in Antecedents of Emotion, in P. Ekman, R.J. Davidson (eds.), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 172-175. Slezkine Y. (2004) - The Jewish Century, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Šmelev A.D. (1997) - Leksičeskij sostav russkogo jazyka kak otraženie ‘russkoj duši’, in T.V. Bulgarina, A.D. Šmelev (eds.), Jazykovaja konceptualizacija mira (na materiale russkoj grammatiki), Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, M., 481-495. Šmelev A.D. (2001a) - Vzaimodejstvie jazyka i kul’tury: ot slovarja do jazykovogo oblika moral’no-religioznoj propovedi, in A. Werzbicka, Sopostavlenie kul’tur čerez posredstvo leksiki i pragmatiki, Jazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, M., 9-13. Šmelev A.D. (2001b) - Mogut li slova jazyka byt’ ključom k ponimaniju kul’tury?, in A. Werzbicka, Ponimanie kul’tur čerez posredstvo ključevyx slov, Jazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, M., 7-11. Vinitsky [Vinickij] I. (2011) - ‘The Queen of Lofty Thoughts’: The Cult of Melancholy in Russian Sentimentalism, in M.D. Steinberg, V. Sobol (eds.), Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe, Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, 18-43. Volková B. (2008) - Exile Inside and Out, in A.H. Rosenfeld (ed.), The Writer Uprooted: Contemporary Jewish Exile Literature, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 161-176. Vysockij V. (1999) - Sočinenija v dvux tomax, Lokid, M. Wierzbicka A. (1999) - Duša 'Soul', Toska 'Yearning', Sud’ba 'Fate': Three Key Concepts in Russian Language and Russian Culture, in Z. Saloni (ed.), Metody formal’ne v opisie języków słowianskich, Dział Wydawnictw Filii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Białystok, 13-32. Zareckij E. (2007) - O russkom fatalizme v grammatike, “Relga”, CLVII.12, cf. <http://www.relga.ru/Environ/WebObj ects/tgu-www.woa/wa/Main?textid=2030&level1=main&level2=articles> (cons. 02.13.15).