Echoes of Past: The Joyful Dance of Nostalgia in Tales around the World

Abstract

Nostalgia is a powerful memory of reflective affection and sometimes a soap-operatic or longing for a time in the past. Both pleasure and wretchedness are the two sides of nostalgia. The individual reminisces the past moments, experiences, locations and relationships. These influential emotions have been playing a vital role in world literature and functions as the prominent theme which relates the readers experience with the characters and events in the literature. “Nostalgia, unlike screen memory, does not relate to a specific memory, but rather to an emotional state” Alan R. Hirsh defines psychologically.
The stories of different cultures and nations frequently apply the theme of nostalgia to replicate on individual and collective identities by emphasizing the impression of the recollection on cultural inheritance. Most writers employ nostalgia to propose cultural shifts, emotional reactions, and generate nuance to character development and explore social changes. Eventually, nostalgia improves story telling by encouraging links between the past and present, enabling readers to involve with their own pasts and recollections.
Nostalgia predominantly shapes the identities, purposes, and emotional landscapes of characters in world literature. In the lens of nostalgia, literary art repeatedly mirrors the cultural and historical contexts to analyze the social and cultural transforms or expose the desire for a perceived golden age. The readers could easily connect their own experiences with this interchange between reminiscence and individuality. The writers employ nostalgia as an influential key theme that echoes through various cultures and narratives.