In Person Only: The session will be held fully in person at the hotel. No remote presentations will be included.
Ronald Granofsky (McMaster University)
What exactly is nostalgia? Do we tend to idealize events of the past because they are completed and unchangeable while the the present is in flux and the future is unknown? Do we distort the past to create a positive image of it? While the function of memory is crucial for what D.W. Winnicott calls "continuity of being", how does a nostalgic view of the past affect our sense of self if memory is subject to distortion? D.H. Lawrence explored various facets of nostalgia in his writing in part because he loathed aspects of the industrialized modern world he lived in and longed for what he considered to be a more halcyon bygone era. But Lawrence was decidedly ambivalent about looking back. He evokes the biblical story of Lot's wife, whose looking back to the burning Sodom resulted in her transformation into a pillar of salt, in the poem "She Looks Back" and in the novel Aaron's Rod. On the other hand, in the novel Kangaroo, he describes nostalgia as an intense longing: "Torture of nostalgia. He craved to be back..." Is nostalgia most attractive in Lawrence's work when the thread of continuity of being is frayed by present events and a return to the past promises a mending of the thread? Does Lawrence reflect a cultural nostalgia based on the concept of humanity's lost paradise in the mythical past? This session is sponsored by the D. H. Lawrence Society.
D.H. Lawrence explored various facets of nostalgia in his work. He was decidedly ambivalent about a return to the past, at times strongly attracted to it, at times suggesting the distortions it could create. How was his view of nostalgia influenced by his loathing of the industrialized modern world he lived in? How much did the Christian view of humanity's lost paradise in the mythical past affect his writing?